'You'll remember what Count Spigno said before you others checked him. The arbalester ... You remember.' Bellarion appeared to falter a little under the glare of those blue eyes and the fierce set of that heavy jaw. 'So I told her highness, to raise her drooping spirits, that one of these fine days her friends in Casale might cut the Gordian knot with a crossbow shaft.' Barbaresco suggested by his attitude a mastiff crouching for a spring. 'Ah!' he commented. 'And she said?' 'The very contrary of what I expected. Where I looked for elation, I found only distress. It was in vain I pleaded with her that thus a consummation would speedily be reached; that if such a course had not yet been determined, it was precisely the course that I should advocate.' 'Oh! You pleaded that! And she?' 'She bade me tell you that if such a thing were indeed in your minds, you must dismiss it. That she would be no party to it. That sooner she would herself denounce the intention to the Marquis Theodore.' 'Body of God!' Barbaresco came to his feet, his great face purple, the veins of his temples standing forth like cords Whilst appearing unmoved, Bellarion braced his muscles for action. The attack came. But only in words. Barbaresco heaped horrible and obscene abuse upon Bellarion's head. 'You infamous fool! You triple ass! You chattering ape!' With these, amongst other terms, the young man found himself bombarded. 'Get you back to her, and tell her, you numskulled baboon, that there was never any such intention.' 'But was there not?' Bellarion cried with almost shrill ingenuousness of tone. 'Yet Count Spigno ...' 'Devil take Count Spigno, fool. Heed me. Carry my message to her highness.' 'I carry no lies,' said Bellarion firmly, and rose with great dignity. 'Lies!' gurgled Barbaresco. 'Lies,' Bellarion insisted. 'Let us have done with them. To her highness I expressed as a suspicion what in my mind was a clear conviction. The words Count Spigno used, and your anxiety to silence him, could leave no doubt in any man of wit, and I am that, I hope, my lord. If you will have this message carried, you will first show me the ends you serve by its falsehood, and let me, who am in this thing as deep as any, be the judge of whether it is justified.' Before this firmness the wrath went out of Barbaresco. Weakly he wrung his hands a moment, then sank sagging into his chair. 'If the others, if Cavalcanti or Casella, had known how much you had understood, you would never have left this house alive, lest you should do precisely what you have done.' 'But if it is on her behalf--hers and her brother's--that you plan this thing, why should you not take her feeling first? What else is right or fair?'