He leaned back against the wall in silence. A certain winter morning, five years ago, rose clearly before him; a massive castle, frowning from the rocks above Modena, and on its steps a fair girl who stood there and laughed to see him ride away back to Milan, his offer of the Visconti's friendship scorned and flung in his face by her proud family, the haughty Estes. Visconti's face grew dark as he remembered her; almost more than Della Scala, her dead husband, did he hate Isotta, Della Scala's wife. And she was in his power. Greatly would it have soothed him to know her death was in his power too, but the lust of ambition was greater with this man even than the lust of pride or hate. Isotta d'Este was a valuable hostage to be used against her family, should they think of avenging their fallen kinsman. "Where hast thou finally placed her, my lord?" asked Giannotto, with his stealthy glance. The Duke started from his reverie. "In the West Tower," he smiled. "Every day I go to gaze on the room that holds her to make sure it is not a dream; to see and feel with my eyes and my own hands that her prison is doubly sure. If Isotta d'Este should now escape me--but she will not!" He crossed the room to leave it, but paused at the door. "Be watchful, Giannotto, the Princess Valentine may try to leave the palace. I have spies on her every movement; still, thine eyes upon her also will do no harm--to _me_!" He laughed an instant. A rustle of the hangings and he was gone. Giannotto sat on silently, looking in front of him. His thoughts were with Valentine Visconti, Gian's unhappy sister, whom he had been told to watch; from her they traveled to the German Count, who, five days ago, had left the palace. "I wonder if she loved him," he mused. "I do not think she did. Dear God, she did not need to wait to love a man, her life was not such that she could pick and choose her way of escaping from it. Conrad offered one and she was ready to take it--now--_five days ago!_ Yes--Count Conrad is dead, and she will marry the Duke of Orleans! Ah, well! The German was a fool, he deserved no better fate than a fool! I do not think she'll break her heart if she can find some other way." He returned to his papers, pausing now and then to glance toward the door, as if to keep himself on the alert for the Duke's noiseless entry. But Gian had bent his steps elsewhere. Plainly dressed, he passed almost unnoticed across an inner courtyard to a dark angle of a wall where a secret door anew admitted him. The whole Visconti palace was a somber and gloomy place; men crept about it on tiptoe, glancing fearfully around them, afraid of their own shadows. Visconti smiled to himself at sight of fear; he loved to be feared, to hold lives in the hollow of his hand, and play with them and death.