“I was seeking you, Agostino,” she said in greeting. “Having found me, Madonna, you will give me leave to go,” said I. But she was resolutely barring my way. A slow smile parted her scarlet lips and broke over that ivory countenance that once I had deemed so lovely and now I loathed. “I mind me another occasion in a garden betimes one morning when you were in no such haste to shun me.” I crimsoned under her insolent regard. “Have you the courage to remember?” I exclaimed. “Half the art of life is to harbour happy memories,” said she. “Happy?” quoth I. “Do you deny that we were happy on that morning?--it would be just about this time of year, two years ago. And what a change in you since then! Heigho! And yet men say that woman is inconstant!” “I did not know you then,” I answered harshly. “And do you know me now? Has womanhood no mysteries for you since you gathered wisdom in the wilderness?” I looked at her with detestation in my eyes. The effrontery, the ease and insolence of her bearing, all confirmed my conviction of her utter shamelessness and heartlessness. “The day after... after your husband died,” I said, “I saw you in a dell near Castel Guelfo with my Lord Gambara. In that hour I knew you.” She bit her lip, then smiled again. “What would you?” answered she. “Through your folly and crime I was become an outcast. I went in danger of my life. You had basely deserted me. My Lord Gambara, more generous, offered me shelter and protection. I was not born for martyrdom and dungeons,” she added, and sighed with smiling plaintiveness. “Are you, of all men, the one to blame me?” “I have not the right, I know,” I answered. “Nor do I blame you more than I blame myself. But since I blame myself most bitterly--since I despise and hate myself for what is past, you may judge what my feelings are for you. And judging them, I think it were well you gave me leave to go.” “I came to speak of other than ourselves, Ser Agostino,” she answered, all unmoved still by my scorn, or leastways showing nothing of what emotions might be hers. “It is of that simpering daughter of my Lord of Pagliano.” “There is nothing I could less desire to hear you talk upon,” said I. “It is so very like a man to scorn the thing I could tell him after he has already heard it from me.” “The thing you told me was false,” said I. “It was begotten of fear to see your own base interests thwarted. It is proven so by the circumstance that the Duke has sought the hand of Madonna Bianca for Cosimo d'Anguissola.” “For Cosimo?” she cried, and I never saw her so serious and thoughtful. “For Cosimo? You are sure of this?” The urgency of her tone was such that it held me there and compelled my answer. “I have it from my lord himself.” She knit her brows, her eyes upon the ground; then slowly she raised them, and looked at me again, the same unusual seriousness and alertness in every line of her face. “Why, by what dark ways does he burrow to his ends?” she mused.