She sighed and smiled again. 'I am glad, so glad to have you think well of me. It is what I have desired of you, Bellarion. But I have been afraid. Afraid that your Princess of Montferrat might ... supply an obstacle.' 'Could any supply an obstacle? I scarcely understand. All that I have and am I owe to my Lord Count. Am I an ingrate that I could be less than your slave, yours and my Lord Count's?' She looked at him again, and now she was oddly white, and there was a hard brightness in her eyes which a moment ago had been so soft and melting. 'Oh! You talk of gratitude!' she said. 'Of what else?' 'Of what else, indeed? It is a great virtue, gratitude; and a rare. But you have all the virtues. Have you not, Bellarion?' He fancied that she sneered. They passed from the failing sunlight into the shadows of the wood. But the chill that fell between them was due to deeper causes. CHAPTER IV THE CHAMPION Facino Cane took his ease at Abbiategrasso in those declining days of 1407 and zestfully devoted himself to the training and education of Bellarion. It was the first rest the great soldier had known in ten years, a rest he would never have taken but for the novel occupation which Bellarion provided him. For Facino was of those who find no peace in utter idleness. He was of a restless, active mind, and being no scholar found no outlet for his energy save in physical directions. Here at Abbiategrasso, away from turbulence, and able for the first time since Gian Galeazzo's death to live without being perpetually on guard, he confessed himself happier than he could remember to have been. 'If this were life,' he said to Bellarion one evening as they sauntered through the parklands where the red deer grazed, 'a man might be content.' 'Content,' said Bellarion, 'is stagnation. And man was not made for that. I am coming to perceive it. The peace of the convent is as the peace of the pasture to the ox.' Facino smiled. 'Your education progresses.' 'I have left school,' said Bellarion. 'You relish this lull in your activities, as a tired man relishes sleep. But no man would be glad to sleep his life away.' 'Dear philosopher, you should write a book of such sayings for man's entertainment and information.' I think I'll wait until I am a little older. I may change my mind again.' It was not destined that the rest by which Facino was setting such store should endure much longer. Rumours of trouble in Milan began to reach them daily, and in the week before Christmas, on a morning when a snowstorm kept them within doors about a great hissing fire in the main hall, Facino wondered whether he should not be returning. The bare suggestion seemed to anger his countess, who sat brooding in a chair of brown walnut set at one of the corners of the hearth. 'I thought you said we should remain here until spring.' Her tone revealed the petulance that was ever just under the surface of her nature.