'You treacherous slug! I place you in possession of Vercelli; I make you Prince of Genoa, before calling upon you to strike a single blow on my behalf, and you prepare to use this new-found power against me! You'll drive me from Alessandria! You'll seduce from me the best among my captains to turn his weapons against me in your service! If Bellarion had been an ingrate like yourself, if he had not been staunch and loyal, whom you dare to call a Judas, I might have known nothing of this until too late to guard myself. But I know you now, you dastardly usurper, and, by the Bones of God, your days are numbered. You'll prepare for war on Facino Cane, will you? Prepare, then, for, by the Passion, that war is coming to you.' Theodore stood there white to the lips, between his two dismayed gentlemen, and said no word in answer. Facino, with curling lip, considered him. 'I'd never have believed it if I had not read these for myself,' he added. Then proffered the documents to Bellarion again. 'Give him back his parchments, and let us go. The sight of the creature nauseates me.' And without more, he hobbled out. Bellarion lingered to tear the parchments across and across. He cast them from him, bowed ironically, and was going out with Stoffel when the Regent found his voice at last. 'You kite-hearted trickster! What stipend have you wrung from Facino as the price of this betrayal?' Bellarion paused on the threshold. 'No stipend, my lord,' he answered equably. 'Merely a condition: that so soon as the affairs of Milan are settled, he will see justice done to your nephew, the Marquis Gian Giacomo, now of age to succeed, and put a definite end to your usurpation.' His sheer amazement betrayed from him the sudden question. 'What is Gian Giacomo to you, villain?' 'Something he is, or else I should never have been at pains to make him safe from you by demanding him as a hostage. I have been labouring for him for longer than you think, highness.' 'You have been labouring for him? You? In whose pay?' Bellarion sighed. 'You must be supposing me a tradesman, even when I am really that quite senseless thing, a knight-errant.' And he went out with Stoffel. CHAPTER III FACINO'S RETURN A strong party of men-at-arms rode out of Genoa that morning, their corselets flashing in the sunshine, and took the upland road by the valley of the Scrivia towards Novi and Facino's camp. In their midst went a mule litter wherein Facino brooded upon the baseness and ingratitude of men, and asked himself whether perhaps his ambitious Countess were not justified of her impatience with him because he laboured for purposes other than the aggrandisement of himself. From Novi he despatched Carmagnola with a strong escort to Casale to bring the Countess Beatrice thence to Alessandria without loss of time. He had no mind to allow Theodore to hold her as a hostage to set against Gian Giacomo who remained with Facino.