ailed staircase of stone, leading to an eerie
which corresponded diagonally with the Lion's Tower, where the Count of
Aquila was lodged.

On this green lawn Valentina's ladies and a page beguiled the eventide
in a game of bowls, their clumsiness at the unwonted pastime provoking
the good-humoured banter of Peppe, who looked on, and their own still
better-humoured laughter.

Fortemani, too, was there, brazening out the morning's affair, which it
almost seemed he must have forgotten, so self-possessed and mightily at
his ease was he. He was of the kind with whom shame strikes never very
deeply, and he ruffled it gaily there, among the women, rolling his
fierce eyes to ogle them seductively, tossing his gaudy new cloak with
a high-born disdain--gloriously conscious that it would not rend in
the tossing, like the cloaks to which grim Circumstance had lately
accustomed him--and strutting it like any cock upon a dunghill.

But the lesson he had learnt was not likely to share the same
forgetfulness. Indeed, its fruits were to be observed already in the
more orderly conduct of his men, four of whom, partisan on shoulder,
were doing duty on the walls of the castle. They had greeted his return
amongst them with sneers and derisive allusions to his immersion, but
with a few choicely-aimed blows he had cuffed the noisiest into silence
and a more subservient humour. He had spoken to them in a rasping,
truculent tone, issuing orders that he meant should be obeyed, unless
the disobeyer were eager for a reckoning with him.

Indeed, he was an altered man, and when that night his followers, having
drunk what he accounted enough for their good, and disregarding his
orders that they should desist and get them to bed, he went in quest
of Monna Valentina. He found her in conversation with Francesco and
Gonzaga, seated in the loggia of the dining-room. They had been there
since supper, discussing the wisdom of going or remaining, of fleeing
or standing firm to receive Gian Maria. Their conference was interrupted
now by Ercole with his complaint.

She despatched Gonzaga to quell the men, a course that Fortemani
treated to a covert sneer. The fop went rejoicing at this proof that
her estimate of his commanding qualities had nowise suffered by contrast
with those of that swashbuckling Francesco. But his pride rode him to a
bitter fall.

They made a mock of his remonstrances, and when he emulated Francesco's
methods, addressing them with s