All his brilliant, his magical successes could not quite obliterate the sting of that one failure. Graziosa's name was a forbidden one; the splendid dwelling where she had shone so brief a while, shut to moulder. She was a thing of the past, though only ten days dead; but Visconti could not quite forget. She had been buried quietly, in the same church as her father, at dead of night, with no mourners. And was she not gone--forgotten? Yet, disguise it as he might, it was failure. "Yet she loved me," thought Visconti; and it roused his wrath that he must think of her--the house by the western gate--the sweet face, the white roses. "Giannotto," he said moodily, "had she lived, I would not have done it--on my soul I would not have done it!" "Done what, my lord?" asked the startled secretary, looking up at his dark, musing face. "Ah, I forgot," said Visconti. "You do not know." CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE THE PRIDE OF THE D'ESTES "No news! So many days, and still no news!" Ippolito d'Este spoke in an anxious voice, leaning in the wide-cut window of the watch-tower that rose above the gates of Novara. "I would we had not sent those last men," said Vincenzo gloomily. He was seated at the table, his head resting in his hands. The chamber was large and dark, built of rough stone for strength and defense, fixed with narrow windows, and set with three doors--one into the narrow stairs, standing open, one on either side of it, shut. The walls were bare of arras. Vincenzo's armor lay piled in a corner, and a great crucifix, a red praying hassock beneath, hung near one of the windows. "How many have we, my father?" asked Vincenzo, rising. "Six hundred trained soldiers," was the brief answer. "And the townsfolk?" "Are the townsfolk," replied d'Este--"and useless." Novara had been stormed and taken from Visconti some months ago, and the Estes, fixing their headquarters there, had foraged the country around as far as the ramparts of Magenta, a large town held by Visconti's men. For these last fatal ten days, disaster after disaster had reduced the Modenese soldiers to a mere handful; and when Mastino, sending word he was in desperate straits, had called out all of the Veronese that manned the town, they were left practically defenseless, in the midst of a country where Visconti's arms were everywhere triumphant. They dared not leave the town; behind its walls was the only chance of safety. They knew not what positions Visconti held, nor what positions Della Scala. Since that last appeal for aid, they had had no message, no sign from him. Scouts sent out had not returned; one company, advancing from the walls, to find no sign or trace of Mastino, was surrounded and cut to pieces--the few who escaped returning to Novara with ghastly tales. Visconti's arms seemed everywhere victorious. The country was laid waste--and not by their allies.