It took her breath away. 'You have urged this! You, my lord? Let me send for my brother that he may thank you, that he may know that he has at least one stout brave friend in the world.' 'His friend and your servant, madonna.' He bore her white hand to his lips, and there were tears in her eyes as she looked upon his bowed handsome head. 'My hopes, my plans, my schemes for you are to bear fruit at last.' 'Your schemes for me?' Her brows were knit over her moist dark eyes. He laughed. A jovial, debonair, and laughter-loving gentleman, this Francesco Busone of Carmagnola. 'So as to provide a cause disposing the Duke of Milan to proceed against the Regent Theodore. The hour has come, madonna. It needs but your petition to Filippo Maria, and the army marches. So that I command it, I will see justice done to your brother.' 'So that you command it? Who else should?' Carmagnola's bright face was overcast. 'There is Bellarion Cane.' 'That knave!' She recoiled, her countenance troubled. 'He is the Regent's man. It was he who helped the Regent to Vercelli and to the lordship of Genoa.' 'Which he never could have done,' Carmagnola assured her, 'but that I abetted him. I saw that thus I should provide a reason for action against the Regent when later I should come to be on the Duke's side.' 'Ah! That was shrewd! To feed his ambition until he overreached himself.' Carmagnola strutted a little. 'It was a deep game. But we are at the last move in it. If you mistrust this Bellarion ...' 'Mistrust him!' She laughed a bitter little laugh, and she poured forth the tale of how once he had been a spy sent by Theodore to embroil her, and how thereafter he had murdered her one true and devoted friend Count Spigno. Feeding her mistrust and bringing Gian Giacomo fully to share it, Carmagnola conducted them to Milan and procured audience for them with the Duke. Filippo Maria received her in a small room in the very heart of the fortress, a room to which he had brought something of the atmosphere of his library at Pavia. Here were the choicely bound manuscripts, and the writing-table with its sheaves of parchment, and its horn of unicorn, which as all the world knows is a prophylactic against all manner of ills of the flesh and the spirit. Its double window looked out upon the court of San Donato where the October sunshine warmed the red brick to the colour of the rose. He gave her a kindly welcome, then settled into the inscrutable inertia of an obese Eastern idol whilst she made her prayer to him. When it was done he nodded slowly, and despatched his secretary in quest of the Prince of Valsassina. The name conveyed nothing to her, for she had not heard of Bellarion's latest dignity.