angements. He should
have gone by Modena, but the road was in a bad state. A bridge had
broken down, and he had been forced to pass through Ferrara.

'But surely,' said the musician, 'I can hire a pair of horses of some
sort in the town, by paying a good price for them!'

No. The Nuncio had hired everything. Did the gentleman suppose that a
Papal Nuncio could travel with as few as eight or ten horses? He needed
about fifty in all. That was why he proceeded so slowly. There was not
another animal to be had in the town, horse or mule, that could be put
to a wheeled vehicle--not one! The gentleman might hire a riding-horse
or two, but the innkeeper had been told that he had a lady and her
tire-woman with him. Patience! A day would soon pass, Ferrara was a fine
town, well worth seeing, and he could go on to-morrow morning in the
Bologna coach, which would arrive from that city at noon to-day.

Clearly there was not the smallest possibility of being able to get on
during the next twenty-four hours. Stradella's face was very grave as he
turned away, and Cucurullo was paler than before.

Upstairs Ortensia had wakened just then and had called Pina, who got up
and opened the window wide, letting in the air with the morning sun.
Utterly unprovided as the two women were, they had slept half-dressed,
and as Ortensia rose the nurse threw one of the two brown cloaks over
her bare shoulders and fastened it round her neck.

For a few moments after she had opened her eyes the young girl had not
quite understood where she was, for she had lain down exhausted, and
sleep had come to her as her head touched the pillow. Now, in the broad
daylight, when she had plunged her face into cold water, she realised
everything, and the colour rose slowly to her throat and cheeks. She
went to the window and stood there, turned away from Pina and looked
out. Below her lay the chief public square of the city; on the left rose
the huge castle, the most gloomy and forbidding she had ever seen. She
had never heard of Nicholas Third of Este nor of his wife Parisina,
fair, evil, and ill-fated, nor of handsome Ugo, who died an hour before
her for his sins and hers, in the dark chamber at the foot of the Lion
Tower; but if Pina had known the story and had told it to her in all its
horror, Ortensia would have felt that it must be true, and that only
such tragedies as that could happen within such walls. They were so
stern, so square, so dark; the towers rose