’Bite?’ growled Visconti. ’And what about our occupation here?’ ’Why, ’tis testing mail, nothing more. Is a lay-figure in an armoury so strange?’ ’Ay, when ’tis a portrait-model.’ ’O glowing tribute to my art! I designed the doll, true. You make me look down, sir, and simper and bite my finger. Yet my mind misgives me thou flatterest. A portrait-model, yes; but will he recognise of whom?’ ’The knave may—the shrewder fool of the pair.’ ’The greater fool will testify to me? O happy artist! Well, if he do, I will still account him naught. He will take the bait also. The shadow swims and bites with the fish. Besides, should this befall, ’twill save mayhap a world of preliminaries. Remember that "hop of grievance." He comes, it seems, in a mood to jump with ours. Let them in.’ Like souls salvaged from a wreck they came—the Fool propping the Saint—staggering in by the door. Grief and storm and weariness had robbed the boy of speculation, almost of his senses. His drenched hair hung in ropes, his wild eyes stared beneath like a frightened doe’s, his clothes slopped on his limbs. Narcisso struggled with the door and closed it. Suddenly Bernardo, lifting his dazed lids, caught sight of the shadowed lay-figure, recoiled, and shrieking out hoarsely:—’Galeazzo! Thou! O God, doomed soul!’ tottered and slid through Cicada’s limp arms upon the floor. Instantly Narcisso was down by his side, and fumbling with his hands. ’A’s in a swound,’ he was beginning, when, with a rush and heave, the Fool sent him wallowing. ’Darest thou, hog! darest thou! Go rub thy filthy hoofs in ambergris first!’ and he squatted, snarling and showing his teeth. Narcisso rose, to a chorus of laughter, and stood grinning and rubbing his head. ’Well, I never!’ he said. *CHAPTER XIII* The Countess of Casa Caprona was a widow. The news was waiting to overwhelm, or transport, her upon her return to the castello after her interview with Lanti. On the one hand it committed her to dowagery, that last infirmity of imperious minds; on the other to the freedom of a glorified spinsterhood. Though she recognised that, on the whole, the blow was destructive of the real zest of intrigue, she behaved very handsomely by the memory of the deceased, who had died, like a soldier, in harness. She caused a solemn requiem mass to be sung for him in the Duomo; she commissioned a monody, extolling his marital virtues, from an expensive poet; she distributed liberal alms to the poor of the city. There is no trollop so righteous in her matronhood as she made timely a widow. Besides, to this one, the zest of all zests for the moment was revenge. She withdrew to mature it, and to lament orthodoxly her lord, to her dower-house in the Via Sforza.