But there were two among the courtly crowd who did not laugh. One was Francesco Busone of Carmagnola, Facino's handsome, swaggering lieutenant, who looked sourly upon this triumph of an upstart in whom he had already feared a rival. The other was the Princess Valeria, who, herself unseen in that concourse, discovered in this narrative only an impudent confession of trickery from one whom she had known as a base trickster. Almost she suspected him of having deliberately contrived that men should believe him dead to the end that by this sensational resurrection he should establish himself as the hero of the hour. Gabriello Maria, elegant and debonair, came to shake him by the hand, and after Gabriello came the Duke with della Torre, to praise him almost fawningly as the Victor of Travo. 'That title, Lord Duke, belongs to none but my Lord Facino.' 'Modesty, sir,' said della Torre, 'is a garment that becomes a hero.' 'If my Lord Facino did not wear it, sir, you could not lie under your present error. He must have magnified to his own cost my little achievement.' But they would not have him elude their flattery, and when at last they had done with him he was constrained to run the gauntlet of the sycophantic court, which must fawn upon a man whom the Duke approved. And here to his surprise he found the Marquis Theodore, who used him very civilly and with no least allusion to their past association. At last Bellarion escaped, and sought the apartments of Facino. There he found the Countess alone. She rose from her seat in the loggia when he entered, and came towards him so light and eagerly that she seemed almost to drift across the floor. 'Bellarion!' There was a flush on her usually pale cheeks, a glitter in her bright slanting eyes, and she came holding out both hands in welcome. 'Bellarion!' she cried again, and her voice throbbed like the plucked chords of a lute. Instantly he grew uneasy. 'Madonna!' He bowed stiffly, took one of her proffered hands, and bore it formally to his lips. 'To command!' 'Bellarion!' This time that melodious voice was pitched reproachfully. She seized him by his leather-clad arms, and held him so, confronting him. 'Do you know that I have mourned you dead? That I thought my heart would break? That my own life seemed to have gone out with yours? Yet all that you can say to me now--in such an hour as this--so cold and formally is "to command"! Of what are you made, Bellarion?' 'And of what are you made, madonna?' Roughly almost, he disengaged himself from her grip. He was very angry, and anger was a rare emotion in his cold, calculating nature. 'O God! Is there no loyalty in all this world? Below, there was the Duke to nauseate me with flattery which was no more than base disloyalty to my lord. I escape from it to meet here a disloyalty which wounds me infinitely more.'