ut
lead it in my own way, and thank God for the freedom of it; choose my
own comrades; live as I list, where I list; love as I list, where I
list, and die when God pleases with the knowledge that my life had not
been altogether barren. And that poor girl, Fanfulla! Think of her. She
is to be joined in loveless union to such a gross, unfeeling clod as
Gian Maria. Have you no pity for her?"

Fanfulla sighed, his brow clouded.

"I am not so dull but that I can see why you should reason thus to-day,"
said he. "These thoughts have come to you since you have seen her."

Franceseo sighed deeply.

"Who knows?" he made answer wistfully. "In the few moments that we
talked together, in the little time that I beheld her, it may be that
she dealt me a wound far deeper than the one to which she so mercifully
sought to minister."

Now for all that in what the Lord of Aquila said touching the projected
union there was a deal of justice, yet when he asserted that the chief
actors were to have no opportunity of selecting for themselves, he said
too much. That opportunity they were to have. It occurred three days
later at Urbino, when the Duke and Valentina were brought together
at the banquet of welcome given by Guidobaldo to his intended
nephew-in-law. The sight of her resplendent beauty came as a joyful
shock to Gian Maria, and filled him with as much impatience to possess
her as did his own gross ugliness render him offensive in her eyes.
Averse had she been to this wedding from the moment that it had been
broached to her. The sight of Gian Maria completed her loathing of the
part assigned her, and in her heart she registered a vow that sooner
than become the Duchess of Babbiano, she would return to her Convent of
Santa Sofia and take the veil.

Gian Maria sat beside her at the banquet, and in the intervals of
eating--which absorbed him mightily--he whispered compliments at which
she shuddered and turned pale. The more strenuously did he strive to
please, in his gross and clumsy fashion, the more did he succeed
in repelling and disgusting her, until, in the end, with all his
fatuousness, he came to deem her oddly cold. Of this, anon, he made
complaint to that magnificent prince, her uncle. But Guidobaldo scoffed
at his qualms.

"Do you account my niece a peasant girl?" he asked. "Would you have her
smirk and squirm at every piece of flattery you utter? So that she weds
your Highness what shall the rest signify?"

"I would s