r hands like a Madonna in a picture, was
more lovely and winning in the motions of her little head, the wistful
deeps and darks of her eyes, the pathetic curve of her mouth, than any
Madonna short of Leonardo's. Grifone threw up his arms; such a pass
confounded him; he had no tools to pick this sort of lock. Oh, but the
thing was impossible! Two years' longing, the husband dead--why, they
might marry, even, if she would. Perhaps that was what she needed? If
so, he would risk his life in the city again to find a priest. But,
think of it, formalities at this hour!

Molly smiled and blushed; she was sorry for her friend and would have
consoled him if she could; but the thing was so obvious. Did not Grifone
see?

Grifone did not see; he tore his hair, he threatened, prayed, raved,
commanded, coaxed, swore by God and the Devil, clung to her
knees--useless!

"Dear friend," she said, and stroked his hot hair, "you have served me
well. Never serve me now so ill."

She beat him. From that moment, when love was dead, he began to hate
her. She was safe from what she feared. Everything he might have waived
but that, a clean blow at his own conceit. The end was near.

Their colloquy, so frenzied on his part, so staid and generous at once
on hers, was barely over before the hum of many voices crept upon them,
a slow, murmurous advance, out of which, as the hordes drew near, one or
two sharp cries--"Seek, seek!" "Death to the traitor!"--threw up like
the hastier wave-crests in a racing tide. Again they heard (and now more
clearly), "Evviva Madonna! La Madonna di Nona!" and then (more ominous
than all) a cry for Cesare Borgia: "Chiesa! Chiesa!"

At this last Grifone, who had been biting his fingers shrewdly, wrung a
nail apart till the blood came. His was the desperate caught face of a
stoat in a trap.

"What is this crying without?" said Molly in a hush.

"Pest! I must find out," said Grifone.

He climbed to a high window and looked down into the moonlight. "The
Nonesi in force. Cesare Borgia and the troops. Hist! He is going to
speak to them; they are holding him up." He strained to listen--and it
seems that he heard.

"Citizens," said the Borgia, in fact, "I pledge you my sacred word that
the Duchess shall be delivered to you whole and in honour. She shall be
in the Palace within an hour. The Secretary who has her there, who
stabbed his master and (as I learn from Milan) hatched all the plot,
must be left to me. Madonna