ouse, Master Angioletto," said she drily,
"before I go further and see to it."

He bowed himself out. Then he sought his poor Bellaroba, found her in
the garden, drew her aside without trouble of a pretext, and told her
the whole story.

"My lovely dear," he said, "I am a broken man. There has been a terrible
scene with Madama, in which she got so much the worst of it that I was
very triumphantly ruined. You behold me decked with the ashes of my
scorched prosperity. What is to be done with you? For I must go."

"Oh, Angioletto," cried Bellaroba, trembling and catching at his breast,
"won't you--can't you--ruin me too? Then we shall be happy again."

He pressed her to his heart. "Dearest dear," he said, half laughing,
half sobbing, "you are quite ruined enough. Stay as you are. I will see
you every night What! By the Mass, are you not my wife?"

"Of course I am, Angioletto. But nobody thinks so--not even any priest."

"Eh!" he cried, "but that is all the better. Only you and I and Madonna
the Virgin of the Greeks know it. She never blabs secrets, and you dare
not, and I can't. So you see it is well arranged."

She loved him most of all in this gay humour, and provoked him to new
flights.

"But, you wild boy, how can you see me when you are ruined?" she asked,
all her roses in flower at the fun of the thing. "How can you be in the
Schifanoia if you are thrust out of it?"

Angioletto, with a mysterious air, kissed her for answer. "Leave that to
me, my dear," he said. "Never have another of the maids to sleep with
you, and lock your chamber door. Now I must go, because I am kicked out.
Good-bye, my bride; I shall see you long before another dawn."

She let him go at last, and turned to her duties with less sighing than
you would have supposed, and no tears at all. Her belief in the wisdom,
audacity, and decision of her Angioletto was absolute. She had never
known him to fail. Yet if she chanced to think of the towering Count
Guarini plying her with flowers and sweatmeats, she shivered to remember
her citadel naked of all defences. This made her feel homesick for her
lover's arms. Like a sensible girl, therefore, she thought of the Count
as little as possible; still less of another sinister apparition, that
of the obsequious Captain Mosca, craning his lean neck round the corners
of her vision, grinning from ear to ear.

Free of the Schifanoia (whose dust he was yet careful to keep upon his
shoes for the sake of h