and reputation. They remembered perhaps the ill-odour
in which we Anguissola of Mondolfo had been at Rome, for the ghibelline
leanings that ever had been ours and for the rebellion of my father
against the Pontifical sway; and their conclusions gathered a sort of
confirmation from that circumstance.

Long upon the very edge of mutiny and revolt against Gambara's
injustice, it had needed but what seemed a crowning one such as this to
quicken their hatred into expression.

It was all very clear and obvious, and it seemed to me that to-morrow's
trial should be very interesting. I had but to deny; I had but to make
myself the mouthpiece of the rumour that was abroad, and Heaven alone
could foretell what the consequences might be.

Then I smiled bitterly to myself. Deny? O, no! That was a last vileness
I could not perpetrate. The Ruota should hear the truth, and Gambara
should be left to shelter Giuliana, who--Cosimo was assured--had fled to
him in her need as to a natural protector.

It was a bitter thought. The intensity of that bitterness made me
realize with alarm how it still was with me. And pondering this, I fell
asleep, utterly worn out in body and in mind by the awful turmoil of
that day.

CHAPTER III. GAMBARA'S INTERESTS

I awakened to find a man standing beside me. He was muffled in a black
cloak and carried a lanthorn. Behind him the door gaped as he had left
it.

Instantly I sat up, conscious of my circumstance and surroundings, and
at my movement this visitor spoke.

"You sleep very soundly for a man in your case." said he, and the voice
was that of my Lord Gambara, its tone quite coldly critical.

He set down the lanthorn on a stool, whence it shed a wheel of yellow
light intersected with black beams. His cloak fell apart, and I saw that
he was dressed for riding, very plainly, in sombre garments, and that he
was armed.

He stood slightly to one side that the light might fall upon my face,
leaving his own in shadow; thus he considered me for some moments in
silence. At last, very slowly, very bitterly, shaking his head as he
spoke.

"You fool, you clumsy fool!" he said.

Having drawn, as you have seen, my own conclusions from the attitude of
the mob, I was in little doubt as to the precise bearing of his words.

I answered him sincerely. "If folly were all my guilt," said I, "it
would be well."

He sniffed impatiently. "Still sanctimonious!" he sneered. "Tcha! Up
now, and play the ma