d."

"If you will let my friendship be proven also in that----" he began.

But she interrupted him, struck suddenly with a solution to the riddle.

"No, no!" she exclaimed. His face fell a little. He had hoped to place
her in his debt in every possible way, yet here was one in which she
raised a barrier. Upon her head she wore a fret of gold, so richly laced
with pearls as to be worth a prince's ransom. This she now made haste to
unfasten with fingers that excitement set a-tremble. "There!" she cried,
holding it out to him. "Turn that to money, my friend. It should yield
you ducats enough for this enterprise."

It next occurred to her that she could not go alone into that castle
with just Gonzaga and the men he was about to enrol. His answer came
with a promptness that showed he had considered, also, that.

"By no means," he answered her. "When the time comes you must select
such of your ladies--say three or four--as appear suitable and have
your trust. You may take a priest as well, a page or two, and a few
servants."

Thus, in the gloaming, amid the shadows of that old Italian garden,
was the plot laid by which Valentina was to escape alliance with his
Highness of Babbiano. But there was more than that in it, although
that was all that Valentina saw. It was, too, a plot by which she might
become the wife of Messer Romeo Gonzaga.

He was an exiled member of that famous Mantua family, which has bred
some scoundrels and one saint. With the money which, at parting, a
doting mother had bestowed upon him, he was cutting a brave figure at
the Urbino court, where he was tolerated by virtue of his kinship with
Guidobaldo's Duchess, Monna Elizabetta. But his means were running low,
and it behoved him to turn his attention to such quarters as might yield
him profit. Being poor-spirited, and--since his tastes had not inclined
that way--untrained in arms, it would have been futile for him to have
sought the career common to adventurers of his age. Yet an adventurer
at heart he was, and since the fields of Mars were little suited to his
nature, he had long pondered upon the possibilities afforded him by
the lists of Cupid. Guidobaldo--purely out of consideration for Monna
Elizabetta--had shown him a high degree of favour, and upon this he had
been vain enough to found great hopes--for Guidobaldo had two nieces.
High had these hopes run when he was chosen to escort the lovely
Valentina della Rovere from the Convent of Santa S