The soldier was pale with vexation. 'You saw as I did that, as we crossed the gardens, her highness was coming from that enclosure.' 'Yes, booby,' said Corsario, 'and we saw as you did that she came alone. If a man entered by that gate as you say, he got no farther than the enclosed garden, and this your men have searched already. You gain nothing by betraying suspicions. Who and what do you suppose this man?' 'Suppose! I know.' 'What do you know?' 'That he is a rogue, a brigand scoundrel, associate of Lorenzaccio da Trino who slipped through our fingers an hour ago.' 'By the Host!' cried Corsario, in genuine surprise. 'I thought ...' He checked abruptly, and dissembled the break by a laugh. 'And can you dream that the Lady Valeria would harbour a robber?' 'Can I dream, can any man dream, what the Lady Valeria will do?' 'I could dream that she'll put your eyes out if ever the power is hers,' lisped the Lord of Fenestrella with the malice that was of his nature. 'You heard her say they are too good, and that she'll remember it. You should be less ready to tell her all you see. He is a fool who helps to make a woman wise.' The Marquis laughed to applaud his friend's philosophy, and his glance approved him fawningly. The young soldier considered them. 'Sirs, I will resume my search.' When they had searched until night closed in upon the world, investigating every hedge and bush that might afford concealment, the captain came to think that either he had been at fault in concluding that the fugitive had sought shelter in the garden, or else the rogue had found some way out and was now beyond their reach. He retired crestfallen, and the three gentlemen who had accompanied his search and who did not conceal their amusement at its failure went in to supper. CHAPTER V THE PRINCESS At about the time that the young Lord of Montferrat was sitting down belatedly to table with his tutor and his gentleman-in-waiting, a very bedraggled and chilled Bellarion, who for two hours had been standing immersed to the chin in water, his head amid the branches of the alder-bush, came cautiously forth at last. He ventured no farther, however, than the shallow tongue of land behind the marble pavilion, ready at the first alarm to plunge back into his watery concealment. There he lay, shivering in the warm night, and taking stock of his plight, an exercise which considerably diminished him in his self-confidence and self-esteem. 'Experience,' he had been wont to say--being rather addicted, I gather, to the making of epigrammatic formulæ--'is the hornbook of fools, unnecessary for the practical purposes of life to the man of wit.'