De Lana, watching keenly, still kept his eyes, as they crossed the garden, upon that second lady, who puzzled him, and with a soldier's indiscretion he whispered his fears to Giannotto. "My Lady Valentine," said the secretary smiling, "my lord here thinks you entered the prison with one lady and came out with two!" Valentine laughed. "And who, think you, was my second woman, then, lord? Isotta d'Este? Nay, I will satisfy you." "Indeed, lady," began de Lana hastily, but Valentine cut him short. "Come here, Costanza." The girl came forward. "Now hold the torch higher, Adrian," laughed Valentine. The light fell on Costanza's face. "Is that Isotta d'Este, Giannotto?" she asked. "Nay," smiled the secretary. "Now, Giuletta, come hither thou," said Valentine. The other lady stepped forward and threw back her hood. "Now, my lord, Giannotto shall satisfy you--is this Isotta d'Este?" The secretary did not flinch. "My lord," he said, "you must know Della Scala's wife well enough, if by hearsay only. Look yourself. This is not she." They moved on again, de Lana uneasily convinced. "Ma foi," said the silent d'Orleans suddenly. "It is growing very damp. These Italian nights are most unhealthy." And so they passed into the palace. That night a light tap was heard by Giannotto, sitting in his room, and Adrian entered and put two emerald earrings and a bag of ducats on the table. "For the lapse of memory," he whispered, and went as softly and as swiftly as he had come. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE THE DUKE'S RETURN Having succeeded so far, Valentine had little fear; it was now an almost easy matter for her to accomplish the remainder of her plan. She had the palace keys in her possession, and they unlocked secret doors, and more than one hidden entry and private way, entries and ways she knew well, and yet otherwise could not have used. Soon after that dawn that saw Carrara fall by the wayside, Isotta d'Este and Valentine slipped from the palace; aided by Costanza, and joined by Adrian in the long gallery, they passed through the secret door that led through winding passages to the old part of the building, and thence by another entrance almost beneath the walls themselves. Valentine wore a page's suit, her upper lip darkened, a heavy cloak, with a hood such as was worn in traveling, drawn about her, and by her side Visconti's dagger. Despite her anxiety, her passionate desire to frustrate her brother's tyranny, her wild eagerness to be free and outside Milan, Valentine almost enjoyed the part that she was playing; she swaggered more than Adrian, and looked with some scorn on the weakness of Mastino's wife, who wept with her happiness. The thought of Gian's rage and discomfiture was very sweet to Valentine, almost as sweet as the thought of Conrad in Della Scala's camp, and the happy life of freedom coming.