'You are consistent in that you misunderstand me, though I have once reminded you that if I needed money for myself I could sell my information to the Regent. The five ducats are for Gobbo who lent me this smock and these tools of my pretended trade.' And he told her the exact circumstances. She considered him more gently. 'You do not lack resource, sir?' 'It goes with intelligence, madonna,' he reminded her as an argument in favour of what he said. But she ignored it. 'And I am sorry that I ... You shall have ten ducats, unless your pride is above ...' 'Do you see pride in me?' She looked him over with a certain haughty amusement. 'A monstrous pride, an overweening vanity in your acuteness.' 'I'll take ten ducats to convince you of my humility. I may yet need the other five in the service of your highness.' 'That service, sir, is at an end, or will be when you have conveyed my message to the Lord Barbaresco.' Bellarion accepted his dismissal in the settled conviction that her highness was mistaken and would presently be glad to admit it. She was right, you see, touching that vanity of his. CHAPTER VIII STALEMATE Bellarion and Barbaresco sat at supper, waited upon by an untidy and unclean old man who afforded all the service of that decayed establishment. The fare was frugal, more frugal far than the Convent of Cigliano had afforded out of Lent, and the wine was thin and sharp. When the repast was done and the old servant, having lighted candles, had retired, Bellarion startled his host by the portentous gravity of his tone. 'My lord, you and I must talk. I told you that her highness sends no answer to your message, which is the truth, and all that you could expect, since there was no message and consequently could be no answer. I did not tell you, however, that she sends you a message which is in some sense an answer to certain suspicions that I voiced to her.' Barbaresco's mouth fell open, and the stare of his blue eyes grew fixed. Clearly he was startled, and clearly paused to command himself before asking: 'Why did you not tell me this before?' 'I preferred to wait so as to make sure of not going supperless. It may, of course, offend you that I should have communicated my suspicions to her highness. But the poor lady was so downcast by your inaction, that to cheer her I ventured the opinion that you are perhaps not quite so aimless as you wish to appear.' Whatever his convent education may have done for him, it does not seem--as you will long since have gathered--that it had inculcated a strict regard for exactitude. Dissimulation, I fear, was bred in the bones of him; although he would have answered any such charge by informing you that Plato had taught him to distinguish between the lie on the lips and the lie in the heart. 'Oh, but proceed! The opinion?' Barbaresco fiercely challenged him.