.

"When all is said, I see in this no great cause for indignation," he
assured her. "I acknowledge that it may lack the formality that should
attend the addresses of a man in the Duke's position to a lady in yours.
But since he is to wed you, and that soon, why be angered at that he
seeks to pay his court like any other man?"

"I have talked in vain, then," she answered petulantly, "and I am
misunderstood. I do not intend to wed this ducal clod you have chosen to
be my husband."

Guidobaldo stared at her with brows raised, and wonder in his fine
eyes. Then he shrugged his shoulders a trifle wearily. This handsome and
well-beloved Guidobaldo was very much a prince, so schooled to princely
ways as to sometimes forget that he was a man.

"We forgive much to the impetuousness of youth," said he, very coldly.
"But there are bounds to the endurance of every one of us. As your uncle
and your prince, I claim a double duty from you, and you owe a double
allegiance to my wishes. By my twofold authority I have commanded you to
wed with Gian Maria."

The princess in her was all forgotten, and it was just the woman who
answered him, in a voice of protest:

"But, Highness, I do not love him."

A shade of impatience crossed his lofty face.

"I do not remember," he made answer wearily, "that I loved your aunt.
Yet we were wed, and through habit came to love each other and to be
happy together."

"I can understand that Monna Elizabetta should have come to love you,"
she returned. "You are not as Gian Maria. You were not fat and ugly,
stupid and cruel, as is he."

It was an appeal that might have won its way to a man's heart through
the ever-ready channel of his vanity. But it did not so with Guidobaldo.
He only shook his head.

"The matter is not one that I will argue. It were unworthy in us both.
Princes, my child, are not as ordinary folk."

"In what are they different?" she flashed back at him. "Do they not
hunger and thirst as ordinary folk? Are they not subject to the same
ills; do they not experience the same joys? Are they not born, and do
they not die, just as ordinary folk? In what, then, lies this difference
that forbids them to mate as ordinary folk?"

Guidobaldo tossed his arms to Heaven, his eyes full of a consternation
that clearly defied utterance. The violence of his gesture drew a gasp
of pain from him. At last, when he had mastered it:

"They are different," said he, "in that their lives are not thei