’No need. The lady’s a widow, and already self-dismissed.’ ’Alas, a widow! O Carlo, that heavy witness gone before!’ ’I must stand it. Will you come?’ ’Why is this sudden change? I sore misdoubt it for a fashion.’ ’Not sudden. I have her word the court goes all astray without thee. She pines to mother thee.’ ’Mother!—an adulteress for mother! Alack, I am humbled!’ ’Not so low as she. That touches the last matter. She wants the ring back she lent thee.’ ’The ring?’ ’Ay, the ring.’ ’Carlo!’ He searched his clothes and hands in amaze. ’My God! It’s gone!’ ’Gone? Look again.’ ’I had it on my finger. Till this moment I had forgot it clean—my brain so ached. Cicca!’ He turned in trouble on his servant. ’I know nought of it,’ growled the Fool. ’If you had but chose to tell me. I am no gossip. Bona’s ring was it, and leased to thee? Mayhap the rain that night washed it from thy finger.’ ’If it were so—so great a trust abused! O Carlo! What shall I do?’ ’Come back and make thy peace with her.’ Yet his brow gloomed, and he shook his head. ’O, O!’ choked Bernardo, noting him with anguish. ’She sent a message—I can’t help myself,’ grunted Carlo. ’Did you seek to retaliate on her innocent confidence by ruining her? She meant the ring—your withholding it—’twas her troth-token from the Duke. Well, this is like getting a woman into trouble.’ Bernardo cast himself with a cry upon him. ’I will go back! I have no longer choice. I must hold myself a hostage to that loss!’ Carlo let out his satisfaction in a growl. But Cicada, squinting at the two, and rasping thoughtfully on his chin, pondered a speculation into a conviction. ’Narcisso!’ he mused, ’was it he took it? As sure as he is a villain, it was Narcisso took it!’ *CHAPTER XV* The astutest of all the six Sforza brothers was, without question, Messer Ludovico, at present sojourning in the castello of Milan. No higher than fourth in point of age, policy or premonition had never ceased to present him to himself for the first in succession. The uncertainty of life’s tenure, unless ameliorated a little by qualities of tact and conciliation like his own, made him some excuse for this secret conviction. His eldest brother was a monster of the order which, in every age, invites tyrannicide; the Lord of Bari, the second, an ease-loving, good-humoured monster of another kind (he was to die shortly, in fact, of his own obesity), he valued only as so much gross bulk of supineness to be surmounted; Filippo, the third, was an imbecile, whose very existence was already slipping into the obscurity which was presently to spell obliteration. There remained only, junior to himself, Ascanio, a nonentity, and Ottaviano, a headstrong, irresponsible boy, whose possible destiny concerned him as little as though he foresaw his drowning, within the year, in the Adda river.