"The messengers have not returned--but there are plenty bringing news who were not sent for them, my lord." And as the man spoke, a disordered group, soldiers and servants, pressed into the room behind him. "Gently, my friends," said Giannotto, checking their agitated outcry and pointing to the curtains that hid the banqueting hall. "The Duke!" A man, dusty and white-faced, forced himself out of the crowd, small, but swelling every moment. "I bear news the Duke must hear," he said, "and quickly." "Where hast thou come from?" asked the secretary. "What is thy news?" "Since daybreak I have been flying for my life--I am a servant in the garrison at Brescia--it is destroyed," gasped the man. "Brescia!" The echo of horror. "Has Brescia _fallen_?" "Aye, fallen--into Della Scala's hands." Giannotto looked around bewildered, incredulous. "Della Scala at Brescia?" he said. "You dream!" But the room was filled now with a wild-faced crowd that would not be kept back, and from every side echoed the evil tidings. "Brescia--at dawn to-day Della Scala whirled down on us, flushed with victory--and in two hours the town fell." "And Visconti thinks him idle at the d'Este's court!" broke from Giannotto. And the crowd filled the chamber with the whisper of dismay and horror, but from the banqueting room still came the song and the laughter--Visconti was in blissful ignorance of evil. Who could tell him? Who would dare? Well Giannotto knew the fall of Brescia could be only the last of a series of incredible disasters; so swift as to seem miraculous. Victory after victory must have fallen to Della Scala before he could have marched on and taken a place so near Milan; victories following too fast on one another to have reached Visconti before their culmination. The news indeed was terrible! Who would enter the banqueting hall? All shrank. "Tis almost certain death," they muttered, and Giannotto smiled. "The Duke carries deadly weapons." As he spoke the curtains were pulled aside for a moment as one of the serving men stepped out, and Giannotto, bending eagerly forward, caught a glimpse of two faces at the far end of the brilliant table. Visconti's, laughing, triumphant, insolently handsome, and Valentine's, set and white, with dangerous eyes. The curtains fell to again, but Giannotto had a thought. "Leave it to me, good friends," he said, and passed into the hall. "The Lady Valentine shall give the news!" That was the secretary's inspiration. "The Duke dare not touch her, and it will be a pleasure to her that she may reward." And the crowd, gathering in the anteroom, waited, bewildered and terrified, to hear the blow had fallen. "They will stop their song and jest," said the man from Brescia, "let the Duke once know--" The entry of another, panting and torn, interrupted him. "Heaven save Milan!" he gasped. "Verona has fallen!" * * * * *