’Rogue,’ she said, ’to tease and vex me, and all the time this talisman in thy sleeve. Ay, make the most of it: snuffle and root. My dog has deserved of me.’ He wiped his lips with the back of his hand, as if he had drunk. ’Now,’ she said, ’how wert successful? how won’st it, sweet put?’ ’Took it from him, that was all.’ ’How?’ ’When a’ came tumbling in and staggered in a swound. Had heard Messer Andrea relating of how ’twas on him as I entered. Ho, ho! thinks I, here’s that, maybe, will pay the filching! and I dropped and got it, all in a moment like.’ ’You never told me.’ ’You never asked till yesterday. Then I had it not with me. But to-day, thinks I, I’ll bring it up my sleeve for a win-favour—a good last card.’ ’No matter, since I have got it.’ She held it out, and gloated on its device and sparkle. She knew it well: indeed it was a famous gem, the Sforza lion cut in cameo on a deep pure emerald, and known as the Lion ring. ’Hath he not missed it?’ she murmured. ’Not by any sign a’ gives. The sickness of that night still holds him half-amazed. A’ thinks our fine doll, even, but a bug of it—fancies a’ saw it in a dream like. They’d locked it away when he came to.’ ’Poor worldling! Poor little new-born worldling! He shall cut his pretty teeth anon. Well—for Messer Lanti? Did he leap to the trail, or what?’ ’That same moment. Belike they are together now.’ She stood musing a little: then heaved a sudden sigh. ’Poor boy,’ she murmured, ’poor boy! is it I must seek to destroy thee!’ Her mood had veered again in a breath. Her eyes were full of a brooding love and pity. ’Not for the first time,’ muttered Narcisso. She seemed not to hear him—to have grown oblivious of his presence. ’The song he sang to me!’ she murmured: ’Ah, me, if that hour could be mine! A saint in heaven?—not Bona’s! she hath a lord—no saint, did he love her. He looked at me: it came from his heart. If that hour could be mine! Not then—’twere a sin—but now! That one hour—cherished—unspent—the seed of the unquickened pledge between us to all eternity. I could be content, knowing him a saint through that abstinence. My hour—_mine_—to passion to my breast—the shadow of the child that would not be born to me. He looked at me—no spectre of a dead lost love in his eyes—only a hopeless quest—bonds never to be riven. But now—Ah! I cannot kill him!’ She hid her eyes, shuddering. Narcisso, vaguely troubled, gloomed at her. ’You will not go to Messer Ludovico?’ he said. She returned to knowledge of him, as to a sense of pain out of oblivion. ’Go,’ she said coldly. ’Leave all to me. You have done well, and been paid your wages.’ And he did not demur. It was not in her nature to gild her favours unnecessarily. Gold came less lavishly from her than kisses. Her pounds of flesh were her most profitable assets. She was a spendthrift in everything but money. *CHAPTER XIV*