Bareheaded, stripped of his armour, his tall figure bowed, he stood like a criminal before them whilst they remained seated on either side of the writing-table that once had been his own. From the seat whence he had dispensed justice was justice now to be dispensed to him by his nephew. 'You know your offence, my lord,' Gian Giacomo greeted him, a cold, dignified, and virile Gian Giacomo, in whom it was hardly possible to recognise the boy whom he had sought to ruin in body and in soul. 'You know how you have been false to the trust reposed in you by my father, to whom God give peace. Have you anything to say in extenuation?' He parted his lips, then stood there opening and closing his hands before he could sufficiently control himself to answer. 'In the hour of defeat, what can I do but cast myself upon your mercy?' 'Are we to pity you in defeat? Are we to forget in what you have been defeated?' 'I ask not that. I am in your hands, a captive, helpless. I do not claim mercy. I may not deserve it. I hope for it. That is all.' They considered him, and found him a broken man, indeed. 'It is not for me to judge you,' said Gian Giacomo, 'and I am glad to be relieved of that responsibility. For though you may have forgotten that I am of your blood, I cannot forget that you are of mine. Where is his highness of Valsassina?' Theodore fell back a pace. 'Will you set me at the mercy of that dastard?' The Princess Valeria looked at him coldly. 'He has won many titles since the day when to fight a villainy he pretended to become your spy. But the title you have just conferred upon him, coming from your lips, is the highest he has yet received. To be a dastard in the sight of a dastard is to be honourable in the sight of all upright men.' Theodore's white face writhed into a smile of malice. But he answered nothing in the little pause that followed before the door opened upon Bellarion. He came in supported by two of his Swiss, and closely followed by Stoffel. His armour had been removed, and the right sleeve of his leather haqueton, as of the silken tunic and shirt beneath, had been ripped up, and now hung empty at his side, whilst his breast bulged where his arm was strapped to his body. He was very pale and obviously weak and in pain. Valeria came to her feet at sight of him thus, and her face was whiter than his own. 'You are wounded, my lord!' He smiled, rather whimsically. 'It sometimes happens when men go to battle. But I think my Lord Theodore here has taken the deeper hurt.' Stoffel pushed forward a chair, and the Swiss carefully lowered Bellarion to it. He sighed in relief, and leaned forward so as to avoid contact with the back. 'One of your knights, my lord, broke my shoulder in the last charge.' 'I would he had broken your neck.' 'That was the intention.' Bellarion's pale lips smiled. 'But I am known as Bellarion the Fortunate.'