o the garden, and then perhaps up again to my own
chamber, I might get me to bed, what time Fifanti still hammered at that
door. Meanwhile his voice came rasping through those slender timbers, as
he mocked the Lord Cardinal he supposed me.

"You would not be warned, my lord, and yet I warned you enough. You
would plant horns upon my head. Well, well! Do not complain if you are
gored by them."

Then he laughed hideously. "This poor Astorre Fifanti is blind and a
fool. He is to be sent packing on a journey to the Duke, devised to suit
my Lord Cardinal's convenience. But you should have bethought you that
suspicious husbands have a trick of pretending to depart whilst they
remain."

Next his voice swelled up again in passion, and again the door was
shaken.

"Will you open, then, or must I break down the door! There is no barrier
in the world shall keep me from you, there is no power can save you. I
have the right to kill you by every law of God and man. Shall I forgo
that right?" He laughed snarlingly.

"Three hundred ducats yearly to recompense the hospitality I have given
you--and six hundred later upon the coming of the Duke!" he mocked.
"That was the price, my lord, of my hospitality--which was to include
my wife's harlotry. Three hundred ducats! Ha! ha! Three hundred thousand
million years in Hell! That is the price, my lord--the price that you
shall pay, for I present the reckoning and enforce it. You shall be
shriven in iron--you and your wanton after you.

"Shall I be caged for having shed a prelate's sacred blood? for having
sent a prelate's soul to Hell with all its filth of sin upon it? Shall
I? Speak, magnificent; out of the fullness of your theological knowledge
inform me."

I had listened in a sort of fascination to that tirade of venomous
mockery. But now I stirred, and pulled the casement open. I peered
down into the darkness and hesitated. The wall was creeper-clad to the
window's height; but I feared the frail tendrils of the clematis would
never bear me. I hesitated. Then I resolved to jump. It was but little
more than some twelve feet to the ground, and that was nothing to daunt
an active lad of my own build, with the soft turf to land upon below. It
should have been done without hesitation; for that moment's hesitation
was my ruin.

Fifanti had heard the opening of the casement, and fearing that, after
all, his prey might yet escape him, he suddenly charged the door like an
infuriated bull,