unting to her very temples.

"It's a lie!" she blazed at him; "a lie for which you shall be whipped."

He shrugged his shoulders, and cast Francesco's letter on to the table.

"There, Madonna, is something that will prove all that I have said."

She eyed the paper coldly. Her first impulse was to call Fortemani and
carry out her threat of having Gonzaga whipped, refusing so much as to
see this thing that he so confidently termed a proof; but it may be that
his confidence wrought upon her, touching a chord of feminine curiosity.
That he was wrong she never doubted; but that he believed himself right
she was also assured, and she wondered what this thing might be that
had so convinced him. Still she did not touch it, but asked in an
indifferent voice:

"What is it?"

"A letter that was brought hither to-night by a man who swam the moat,
and whom I have ordered to be detained in the armoury tower. It is from
Fanfulla degli Arcipreti to the Count of Aquila. If your memory will
bear you back to a certain day at Acquasparta, you may recall that
Fanfulla was the name of a very gallant cavalier who addressed this
Messer Francesco with marked respect."

She took that backward mental glance he bade her, and remembered. Then
she remembered, too, how that very evening Francesco had said that he
was fretting for news of Babbiano, and that when she had asked how
he hoped that news could reach him at Roccaleone, Gonzaga had entered
before he answered her. Indeed, he had seemed to hesitate upon that
answer. A sudden chill encompassed her at that reflection. Oh, it was
impossible, absurd! And yet she took the letter from the table. With
knit brows she read it, whilst Gonzaga watched her, scarce able to keep
the satisfaction from gleaming in his eyes.

She read it slowly, and as she read her face grew deathly pale. When
she had finished she stood silent for a long minute, her eyes upon
the signature and her mind harking back to what Gonzaga had said, and
drawing comparison between that and such things as had been done
and uttered, and nowhere did she find the slightest gleam of that
discrepancy which so ardently she sought.

It was as if a hand were crushing the heart in her bosom. This man whom
she had trusted, this peerless champion of her cause, to be nothing but
a self-seeker, an intriguer, who, to advance his own ends, had made a
pawn of her. She thought of how for a moment he had held her in his arms
and kissed her, and a