s sober and self-contained as
was my habit. And soon thereafter came my Lord Gambara--a rare thing to
happen in the afternoon.

Awhile the three of us were together in the garden, talking of trivial
matters. Then she fell to wrangling with him concerning something that
Caro had written and of which she had the manuscript. In the end she
begged me would I go seek the writing in her chamber. I went, and hunted
where she had bidden me and elsewhere, and spent a good ten minutes
vainly in the task. Chagrined that I could not discover the thing, I
went into the library, thinking that it might be there.

Doctor Fifanti was writing busily at the table when I intruded. He
looked up, thrusting his horn-rimmed spectacles high upon his peaked
forehead.

"What the devil!" quoth he very testily. "I thought you were in the
garden with Madonna Giuliana."

"My Lord Gambara is there," said I.

He crimsoned and banged the table with his bony hand. "Do I not know
that?" he roared, though I could see no reason for all this heat. "And
why are you not with them?"

You are not to suppose that I was still the meek, sheepish lad who had
come to Piacenza three months ago. I had not been learning my world and
discovering Man to no purpose all this while.

"It has yet to be explained to me," said I, "under what obligation I
am to be anywhere but where I please. That firstly. Secondly--but of
infinitely lesser moment--Monna Giuliana has sent me for the manuscript
of Messer Caro's Gigli d'Oro."

I know not whether it was my cool, firm tones that quieted him. But
quiet he became.

"I... I was vexed by your interruption," he said lamely, to explain his
late choler. "Here is the thing. I found it here when I came. Messer
Caro might discover better employment for his leisure. But there,
there"--he seemed in sudden haste again. "Take it to her in God's name.
She will be impatient." I thought he sneered. "O, she will praise your
diligence," he added, and this time I was sure that he sneered.

I took it, thanked him, and left the room intrigued. And when I rejoined
them, and handed her the manuscript, the odd thing was that the subject
of their discourse having meanwhile shifted, it no longer interested
her, and she never once opened the pages she had been in such haste to
have me procure.

This, too, was puzzling, even to one who was beginning to know his world

But I was not done with riddles. For presently out came Fifanti himself,
looki