nied by a strong escort, and returned without
mishap, though I would not consent to a third excursion, lest a rumour
having gone abroad, our enemies should lie in wait to trap us. I grew
strangely fearful of losing her who did not and who never might belong
to me.

And all this time my penance, as I regarded it, grew daily heavier to
bear. Long since I had ceased so much as to kiss her finger-tips. But
to kiss the very air she breathed was fraught with danger to my peace
of mind. And then one evening, as we paced the garden together, I had
a moment's madness, a moment in which my yearnings would no longer be
repressed. Without warning I swung about, caught her in my arms, and
crushed her to me.

I saw the sudden flicker of her eyelids, the one swift upward glance of
her blue eyes, and I beheld in them a yearning akin to my own, but also
a something of fear that gave me pause.

I put her from me. I knelt and kissed the hem of her mourning gown.

"Forgive me, sweet." I besought her very humbly.

"My poor Agostino," was all she answered me, what time her fingers
fluttered gently over my sable hair.

Thereafter I shunned her for a whole week, and was never in her company
save at meals under the eyes of our attendants.

At last, one day in the early part of September, on the very anniversary
of her father's death--the eighth of that month it was, and a
Thursday--came Galeotto with a considerable company of men-at-arms; and
that night he was gay and blithe as I had never seen him in these twelve
months past.

When we were alone, the cause of it, which already I suspected, at last
transpired.

"It is the hour," he said very pregnantly. "His sands are swiftly
running out. To-morrow, Agostino, you ride with me to Piacenza. Falcone
shall remain here to captain the men in case any attempt should be made
upon Pagliano, which is not likely."

And now he told us of the gay doings there had been in Piacenza for the
occasion of the visit of the Duke's son Ottavio--that same son-in-law of
the Emperor whom the latter befriended, yet not to the extent of giving
him the duchy in his father's place when that father should have gone to
answer for his sins.

Daily there had been jousts and tournaments and all manner of gaieties,
for which the Piacentini had been sweated until they could sweat no
more. Having fawned upon the people that they might help him to crush
the barons, Farnese was now crushing the people whose service he