t, if thou confess
not, none will ever wot of thine." Then quoth he:--"Since thou givest me
this promise, I will stay; but mind thou keep it."

The damsel, who had done her best to keep her condition secret, saw at
length by the increase of her bulk that 'twas impossible: wherefore one
day most piteously bewailing herself, she made her avowal to her mother,
and besought her to shield her from the consequences. Distressed beyond
measure, the lady chid her severely, and then asked her how it had come
to pass. The damsel, to screen Pietro, invented a story by which she put
another complexion on the affair. The lady believed her, and, that her
fall might not be discovered, took her off to one of their estates;
where, the time of her delivery being come, and she, as women do in such
a case, crying out for pain, it so befell that Messer Amerigo, whom the
lady expected not, as indeed he was scarce ever wont, to come there, did
so, having been out a hawking, and passing by the chamber where the
damsel lay, marvelled to hear her cries, and forthwith entered, and asked
what it meant. On sight of whom the lady rose and sorrowfully gave him
her daughter's version of what had befallen her. But he, less credulous
than his wife, averred that it could not be true that she knew not by
whom she was pregnant, and was minded to know the whole truth: let the
damsel confess and she might regain his favour; otherwise she must expect
no mercy and prepare for death.

The lady did all she could to induce her husband to rest satisfied with
what she had told him; but all to no purpose. Mad with rage, he rushed,
drawn sword in hand, to his daughter's bedside (she, pending the parley,
having given birth to a boy) and cried out:--"Declare whose this infant
is, or forthwith thou diest." Overcome by fear of death, the damsel broke
her promise to Pietro, and made a clean breast of all that had passed
between him and her. Whereat the knight, grown fell with rage, could
scarce refrain from slaying her. However, having given vent to his wrath
in such words as it dictated, he remounted his horse and rode to Trapani,
and there before one Messer Currado, the King's lieutenant, laid
information of the wrong done him by Pietro, in consequence whereof
Pietro, who suspected nothing, was forthwith taken, and being put to the
torture, confessed all. Some days later the lieutenant sentenced him to
be scourged through the city, and then hanged by the neck; and Messer