'True!' cried Fenestrella. 'And it was you unhorsed Vignate!' 'That was an accident. I slid aside when he rode at me. He overshot his aim and I took advantage of the moment.' Valeria's eyes were still upon him, almost incredulous in their glance. Oh, he was utterly without shame. He retorted upon her with the truth; but it was by making the truth sound like a mockery that he defeated her. She looked away at last, nor spoke to him again. Delivered from her attacks, Bellarion addressed himself to the young Marquis, and by way of polite inquiry into his studies asked him how he liked Virgil. 'Virgilio?' quoth the boy, mildly surprised. 'You know Virgilio, do you? Bah, he's a thieving rogue, but very good with dogs.' 'I mean the poet, my lord.' 'Poet? What poet? Poets are a weariness. Valeria reads me their writings sometimes. God knows why, for there's no sense in them.' 'If you read them to yourself, you might ...' 'Read them to myself? Read? God's bones, sir! You take me for a clerk! Read!' He laughed the notion contemptuously away, and buried his face in his cup. 'His highness is a backward scholar,' Corsario deprecated. 'We do not thrust learning upon him,' Theodore explained. 'He is not very strong.' Valeria's lip quivered. Bellarion perceived that it was with difficulty she kept silent. 'Why, you know best, sir,' he lightly said, and changed his subject. Thereafter the talk was all of trivial things until the meal was done. After the Princess had withdrawn and the young Marquis and Fenestrella had begged leave to go, the Regent dismissed Messer Corsario and the servants, but retained his guest to the last. 'I will not keep you now, sir. You'll need to rest. But before we separate you may think it well to tell me briefly what my Lord Facino proposes. Thus I may consider it until we come to talk of it more fully this evening.' Bellarion, who knew, perhaps as few men knew, the depth of Theodore's craft, foresaw a very pretty duel in which he would have need of all his wits. 'Briefly, then,' said he, 'your highness desires the recovery of Vercelli and similarly the restoration of the lordship of Genoa. Alone you are not in strength to gratify your aims. My Lord Facino, on the other hand, is avowedly in arms against the Duke of Milan. He is in sufficient strength to stand successfully on the defensive. But his desire is to take the offensive, drive out Malatesta, and bring the Duke to terms. An alliance with your highness would enable each of you to achieve his ends.' The Regent took a turn in the room before he spoke. He came at last, to stand before Bellarion, his back to the Gothic doorway and the sunlight beyond, graceful and tall and so athletically spare that a boy of twenty might have envied him his figure. He looked at Bellarion with those pale, close-set eyes which to the discerning belied the studiedly benign expression of his handsome, shaven face.