ere at Mondolfo where none would look to find him,
assuming it to be the last place to which he would adventure. He was to
have come when death took him on the field of Perugia."

There was something here that I did not understand at all. And in like
case, it seemed, was Fra Gervasio, for he passed a hand over his brow,
as if to clear thence some veils that clogged his understanding.

"He was to have come?" he echoed. "To shelter?" he asked.

"Nay," said she quietly, "to death. The papal emissaries had knowledge
of it and would have been here to await him."

"You would have betrayed him?" Fra Gervasio's voice was hoarse, his eyes
were burning sombrely.

"I would have saved my son," said she, with quiet satisfaction, in a
tone that revealed how incontestably right she conceived herself to be.

He stood there, and he seemed taller and more gaunt than usual, for he
had drawn himself erect to the full of his great height--and he was a
man who usually went bowed. His hands were clenched and the knuckles
showed blue-white like marble. His face was very pale and in his temple
a little pulse was throbbing visibly. He swayed slightly upon his
feet, and the sight of him frightened me a little. He seemed so full of
terrible potentialities.

When I think of vengeance, I picture to myself Fra Gervasio as I beheld
him in that hour. Nothing that he could have done would have surprised
me. Had he fallen upon my mother then, and torn her limb from limb,
it would have been no more than from the sight of him I might have
expected.

I have said that nothing that he could have done would have surprised
me. Rather should I have said that nothing would have surprised me save
the thing he did.

Whilst a man might have counted ten stood he so--she seeing nothing of
the strange transfiguration that had come over him, for her eyes were
downcast as ever. Then quite slowly, his hands unclenched, his arms
fell limply to his sides, his head sank forward upon his breast, and his
figure bowed itself lower than was usual. Quite suddenly, quite softly,
almost as a man who swoons, he sank down again into the chair from which
he had risen.

He set his elbows on the table, and took his head in his hands. A groan
escaped him. She heard it, and looked at him in her furtive way.

"You are moved by this knowledge, Fra Gervasio," she said and sighed. "I
have told you this--and you, Agostino--that you may know how deep, how
ineradicable is my purpose