"She was," I answered bitterly, "and G.o.d pity me that I must say it to you--she was to me what Circe was to the followers of Ulysses."

She made a little moan, and I saw her clasp her hands in her lap; and the sound and sight filled me with sorrow and despair. She must know.

Better that the knowledge should stand between us as a barrier which both could see than that it should remain visible only to the eyes of my own soul, to daunt me.

"O Bianca! Forgive me!" I cried. "I did not know! I did not know! I was a poor fool reared in seclusion and ripened thus for the first temptation that should touch me. That is what on Monte Orsaro I sought to expiate, that I might be worthy of the shrine I guarded then. That is what I would expiate now that I might be worthy of the shrine whose guardian I would become, the shrine at which I worship now."

I was bending very low above her little brown head, in which the threads of the gold coif-net gleamed in the fading light.

"If I had but had my vision sooner," I murmured, "how easy it would have been! Can you find mercy for me in your gentle heart? Can you forgive me, Bianca?

"O Agostino," she answered very sadly, and the sound of my name from her lips, coming so naturally and easily, thrilled me like the sound of the mystic music of Monte Orsaro. "What shall I answer you? I cannot now.

Give me leisure to think. My mind is all benumbed. You have hurt me so!"

"Me miserable!" I cried.

"I had believed you one who erred through excess of holiness."

"Whereas I am one who attempted holiness through excess of error."

"I had believed you so, so...O Agostino!" It was a little wail of pain.

"Set me a penance," I implored her.

"What penance can I set you? Will any penance restore to me my shattered faith?"

I groaned miserably and covered my face with my hands. It seemed that I was indeed come to the end of all my hopes; that the world was become as much a mockery to me as had been the hermitage; that the one was to end for me upon the discovery of a fraud, as had the other ended--with the difference that in this case the fraud was in myself.

It seemed, indeed, that our first communion must be our last. Ever since she had seen me step into that gold-and-purple dining-room at Pagliano, the incarnation of her vision, as she was the incarnation of mine, Bianca must have waited confidently for this hour, knowing that it was foreordained to come. Bitterness and disillusion were all that it had brought her.

And then, ere more could be said, a thin, flute-like voice hissed down the vaulted gallery:

"Madonna Bianca! To hide your beauty from our hungry eyes. To quench the light by which we guide our footsteps. To banish from us the happiness and joy of your presence! Unkind, unkind!"

It was the Duke. In his white velvet suit he looked almost ghostly in the deepening twilight. He hobbled towards us, his stick tapping the black-and-white squares of the marble floor. He halted before her, and she put aside her emotion, donned a worldly mask, and rose to meet him.

Then he looked at me, and his brooding eyes seemed to scan my face.

"Why! It is Ser Agostino, Lord of Nothing," he sneered, and down the gallery rang the laugh of my cousin Cosimo, and there came, too, a ripple of other voices.

Whether to save me from friction with those steely gentlemen who aimed at grinding me to powder, whether from other motives, Bianca set her finger-tips upon the Duke's white sleeve and moved away with him.

I leaned against the bal.u.s.trade all numb, watching them depart. I saw Cosimo come upon her other side and lean over her as he moved, so slim and graceful, beside her own slight, graceful figure. Then I sank to the cushions of the seat she had vacated, and stayed there with my misery until the night had closed about the place, and the white marble pillars looked ghostly and unreal.

CHAPTER V. THE WARNING

I prayed that evening more fervently than I had prayed since quitting Monte Orsaro. It was as if all the influences of my youth, which lately had been shaken off in the stir of intrigue and of rides that had seemed the prelude to battle, were closing round me again.

Even as a woman had lured me once from the ways to which I seemed predestined, only to drive me back once more the more frenziedly, so now it almost seemed as if again a woman should have lured me to the world but to drive me from it again and more resolutely than ever. For I was anew upon the edge of a resolve to have done with all human interests and to seek the peace and seclusion of the cloister.

And then I bethought me of Gervasio. I would go to him for guidance, as I had done aforetime. I would ride on the morrow to seek him out in the convent near Piacenza to which he had withdrawn.

I was disturbed at last by the coming of a page to my chamber with the announcement that my lord was already at supper.

I had thoughts of excusing myself, but in the end I went.

The repast was spread, as usual, in the banqueting-hall of the castle; and about the splendid table was Pier Luigi's company, amounting to nigh upon a score in all. The Duke himself sat on Monna Bianca's right, whilst on her left was Cosimo.

Heeding little whether I was observed or not, I sank to a vacant place, midway down the board, between one of the Duke's pretty young gentlemen and one of the ladies of that curious train--a bold-eyed Roman woman, whose name, I remember, was Valeria Cesarini, but who matters nothing in these pages. Almost facing me sat Giuliana, but I was hardly conscious of her, or conscious, indeed, of any save Monna Bianca.

Once or twice Bianca's glance met mine, but it fell away again upon the instant. She was very pale, and there were wistful lines about her lips; yet her mood was singular. Her eyes had an unnatural sparkle, and ever and anon she would smile at what was said to her in half-whispers, now by the Duke, now by Cosimo, whilst once or twice she laughed outright.

Gone was the usual chill reserve with which she hedged herself about to distance the hateful advances of Pier Luigi. There were moments now when she seemed almost flattered by his vile ogling and adulatory speeches, as if she had been one of those brazen ladies of his Court.

It wounded me sorely. I could not understand it, lacking the wit to see that this queer mood sprang from the blow I had dealt her, and was the outward manifestation of her own pain at the shattering of the illusions she had harboured concerning myself.

And so I sat there moodily, gnawing my lip and scowling darkly upon Pier Luigi and upon my cousin, who was as a.s.siduous in his attentions as his master, and who seemed to be receiving an even greater proportion of her favours. One little thing there was to hearten me. Looking at the Lord of Pagliano, who sat at the table's head, I observed that his glance was dark as it kept watch upon his daughter--that chaste white lily that seemed of a sudden to have a.s.sumed such wanton airs.

It was a matter that stirred me to battle, and forgotten again were my resolves to seek Gervasio, forgotten all notion of abandoning the world for the second time. Here was work to be done. Bianca was to be guarded.

Perhaps it was in this that she would come to have need of me.

Once Cosimo caught my gloomy looks, and he leaned over to speak to the Duke, who glanced my way with languid, sneering eyes. He had a score to settle with me for the discomfiture he had that morning suffered at my hands thanks to Bianca's collaboration. He was a clumsy fool, when all is said, and confident now of her support--from the sudden and extreme friendliness of her mood--he ventured to let loose a shaft at me in a tone that all the table might overhear.

"That cousin of yours wears a very conventual hang-dog look," said he to Cosimo. And then to the lady on my right--"Forgive, Valeria," he begged, "the scurvy chance that should have sat a shaveling next to you." Lastly he turned to me to complete this gross work of offensiveness.

"When do you look, sir, to enter the life monastic for which Heaven has so clearly designed you?"

There were some sycophants who t.i.ttered at his stupid pleasantry; then the table fell silent to hear what answer I should make, and a frown sat like a thundercloud upon the brow of Cavalcanti.

I toyed with my goblet, momentarily tempted to fling its contents in his pustuled face, and risk the consequences. But I bethought me of something else that would make a deadlier missile.

"Alas!" I sighed. "I have abandoned the notion--constrained to it."

He took my bait. "Constrained?" quoth he. "Now what fool did so constrain you?"

"No fool, but circ.u.mstance," I answered. "It has occurred to me," I explained, and I boldly held his glance with my own, "that as a simple monk my life would be fraught with perils, seeing that in these times even a bishop is not safe."

Saving Bianca (who in her sweet innocence did not so much as dream of the existence of such vileness as that to which I was referring and by which a saintly man had met his death) I do not imagine that there was a single person present who did not understand to what foul crime I alluded.

The silence that followed my words was as oppressive as the silence which in Nature preludes thunder.

A vivid flame of scarlet had overspread the Duke's countenance. It receded, leaving his cheeks a greenish white, even to the mottling pimples. Abashed, his smouldering eyes fell away before my bold, defiant glance. The fingers of his trembling hand tightened about the slender stem of his Venetian goblet, so that it snapped, and there was a gush of crimson wine upon the snowy napery. His lips were drawn back--like a dog's in the act of snarling--and showed the black stumps of his broken teeth. But he made no sound, uttered no word. It was Cosimo who spoke, half rising as he did so.

"This insolence, my lord Duke, must be punished; this insult wiped out.

Suffer me..."