t, he stayed a long time. I hope you
will think it all for the best. I am very good, and kiss you many
times,
"Your BELAROBBA."

Olimpia had indeed been very cross, as Captain Mosca would have
testified. She had not, at any rate, talked _him_ any happier: that he
would have upheld with an oath. The experienced man knew the whip of
sleet on his bare skin; but this was worse than any winter campaign; it
left him dumb and without the little ease which shivering gives you. It
had not been a question so much of talking as of keeping his feet.
Olimpia, when the news came, had raged like a shrieking wind about the
narrow house. "My dearest life! Soul of my soul!" was all the Captain
had to fend the blast. It was no time for endearments--Olimpia raved
herself still. Tears, floods of them, followed, whereat the Captain
melted also and wept. He did foolishly. Demoniac gusts of laughing
caught and flung him to the rafters, chill rages froze him where he
fell. He lost his little store of wit, sagged like a broken sunflower,
and was finally pelted from the door by a storm of Venetian curses, in
which all his ancestors, himself, and any descendants he might dare to
have, were heavily involved. Bellaroba, trembling in her bed, heard him
go with a sinking heart. "Olimpia will come and murder me now," she said
to herself.

But Olimpia slept long where she fell, and next morning decided to
garner her rage.

VI

ENDS AND MEANS

"Amor che a null' amato amar perdona."

Bellaroba, who pleased the Countess, for the same reasons, no doubt, did
not please the Count. It is possible to be too demure, and very little
good to have domestic charm if you shut the door upon the amateur.
Lionella had never had so much of her lord's society as during the month
that followed her return to Ferrara. She did not complain of this; on
the contrary, the more the maid held off and the man pursued, the more
Lionella was entertained. Angioletto, invited to share her sport, proved
dull. She confessed to more than one of her women (including Bellaroba)
that if she had not been very much in love with the poet she would have
thought him a fool. You see that she made no secret of her weakness. The
fact is, she did not consider it a weakness; whereby you have this
remarkable position of affairs at the Schifanoia, that Bellaroba was
invited to be a student of her husband's amours, and he o