ying
dishevelled and unbusked, with all her glossy hair tumbled loose. Very
much a maiden still, notwithstanding her year and a half of troublous
marriage, she jumped up directly she saw him, and, blushful, covered her
neck. Amilcare, finding her and the act adorable together, took her in
his arms and kissed her; then he led her back by the hand to the
window-cushions and made her sit upon his knee. He began to play with
her hair.

"What a silken mesh, my Molly! What a snare for a man in this lovely
cloud! How fragrant of roses! Ah, most beautiful wife, you could lead
all Italy by a strand of this miraculous hair."

She was pleased with his praises, touched and grateful; she kissed him
for them. So they grew more friendly than they had been ever since the
Bentivoglio had shocked her modesty and faith in him at once. Amilcare
rattled on; love-talk comes easily to the Italian tongue, whose very
vocables are caresses.

Gradually he drew in and in to the Borgia, centre of all his spinning
thought.

"There is a lover of yours, for instance!" he said, comically aghast;
and Molly laughed.

"Why, Amilcare, you make all the world to be my lover, all the world to
look at me through your eyes. Believe it, they see me truer than you do.
I am a very simple person."

Amilcare began to count upon his fingers, one hand meeting the other
round Molly's caught waist.

"The Borgia, the Count of Cavalcalupo, Oreste Colonna, Negroponte, three
Bishops at Sesto, Bianca Maria, Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, Ordelaffi,
Benti----"

She stopped him there with a hand on his mouth. "Pah, the horrible man!"

Amilcare gaily struggled for vent, and--"voglio!" he concluded the word.
"You may not relish the trophy, my wife; but him you undoubtedly
charmed. And now Don Cesare is coming. Him also it will be as needful as
easy to please."

Molly turned in her husband's arms to consider him. Something in his
tone (rather than the words he had used) struck bodefully upon her.
Amilcare was kissing her hair and would not give over: she cast down her
eyes unsatisfied.

"I hope I may always please my lord's friends," she said in a low voice.

Amilcare settled himself yet more luxuriously in his cushions, and
looked at the ceiling.

"You must charm him, my soul," he said intensely; "you must charm him. I
am in his hands, in his way; he has sought my ruin and I believe still
seeks it. Twice he has tried to poison me, once to have me stabbed; if
he trie