He rose, leaning heavily upon a gold-headed cane, and looked at her a moment without speaking, his brows contracted. Then:
“Your betrothal to Gian Maria is proclaimed,” he announced in a voice cold with finality. “I have passed my word to the Duke, and your marriage shall take place so soon as he returns. Now go. Such scenes as these are wearisome to a sick man, and they are undignified.”
“But, your Highness,” she began, an imploring note now taking the place that lately had been held by defiance.
“Go!” he blazed, stamping his foot, and then to save his dignity–for he feared that she might still remain–he himself turned on his heel and passed from the apartment.
Left to herself, she stood there a moment, allowed a sigh to escape her, and brushed an angry tear from her brown eyes. Then, with a sudden movement that seemed to imply suppression of her mood, she walked to the door by which she entered, and left the chamber.
She went down the long gallery, whose walls glowed with the new frescoes from the wonder-working brush of Andrea Mantegna; she crossed her ante- chamber and gained the very room where some hours ago she had received the insult of Gian Maria’s odious advances. She passed through the now empty room, and stepped out on to the terrace that overlooked the paradise-like gardens of the Palace.
Close by the fountain stood a white marble seat, over which, earlier that day, one of her women had thrown a cloak of crimson velvet. There she now sat herself to think out the monstrous situation that beset her. The air was warm and balmy and heavy with the scent of flowers from the garden below. The splashing of the fountain seemed to soothe her, and for a little while her eyes were upon that gleaming water, which rose high in a crystal column, then broke and fell, a shower of glittering jewels, into the broad marble basin. Then, her eyes growing tired, they strayed to the marble balustrade, where a peacock strode with overweening dignity; they passed on to the gardens below, gay with early blossoms, in their stately frames of tall, boxwood hedges, and flanked by myrtles and tall cypresses standing gaunt and black against the deep saffron of the vesper sky.
Saving the splashing of the fountain, and the occasional harsh scream of the peacock, all was at peace, as if by contrast with the tumult that raged in Valentina’s soul. Then another sound broke the stillness–a soft step, crunching the gravel of the walk. She turned, and behind her stood the magnificent Gonzaga, a smile that at once reflected pleasure and surprise upon his handsome face.
“Alone, Madonna?” he said, in accents of mild wonder, his fingers softly stirring the strings of the lute he carried, and without which he seldom appeared about the Court.
“As you see,” she answered, and her tone was the tone of one whose thoughts are taken up with other things.
Her glance moved away from him again, and in a moment it seemed as if she had forgotten his presence, so absorbed grew the expression of her face.
But Gonzaga was not easily discouraged. Patience was the one virtue that Valentina more than any woman–and there had been many in his young life –had inculcated into a soul that in the main was anything but virtuous. He came a step nearer, and leant lightly against the edge of her seat, his shapely legs crossed, his graceful body inclining ever so slightly towards her.
“You are pensive, Madonna,” he murmured, in his rich, caressing voice.
“Why then,” she reproved him, but in a mild tone, “do you intrude upon my thoughts?”
“Because they seem sad thoughts, Madonna.” he answered, glibly, “and I were a poor friend did I not seek to rouse you out of them.”
“You are that, Gonzaga?” she questioned, without looking at him. “You are my friend?”
He seemed to quiver and then draw himself upright, whilst across his face there swept a shade of something that may have been good or bad or partly both. Then he leant down until his head came very near her own.
“Your friend?” quoth he. “Ah, more than your friend. Count me your very slave, Madonna.”
She looked at him now, and in his countenance she saw a reflection of the ardour that had spoken in his voice. In his eyes there was a glance of burning intensity. She drew away from him, and at first he accounted himself repulsed, but pointing to the space she had left:
“Sit here beside me, Gonzaga,” she said quietly, and he, scarce crediting his own good fortune that so much favour should be showered upon him, obeyed her in a half-timid fashion that was at odd variance with his late bold words.
He laughed lightly, perhaps to cover the embarrassment that beset him, and dropping his jewelled cap, he flung one white-cased leg over the other and took his lute in his lap, his fingers again wandering to the strings.
“I have a new song, Madonna,” he announced, with a gaiety that was obviously forced. “It is in ottava rima, a faint echo of the immortal Niccolo Correggio, composed in honour of one whose description is beyond the flight of human song.”
“Yet you sing of her?”
“It is no better than an acknowledgment of the impossibility to sing of her. Thus—-” And striking a chord or two, he began, a mezza voce:
“Quando sorriderán’ in ciel
Gli occhi tuoi ai santi–”
She laid a hand upon his arm to stay him.
“Not now, Gonzaga,” she begged, “I am in no humour for your song, sweet though I doubt not that it be.”
A shade of disappointment and ruffled vanity crossed his face. Women had been wont to listen greedily to his strambotti, enthralled by the cunning of the words and the seductive sweetness of his voice.
“Ah, never look so glum,” she cried, smiling now at his crestfallen air. “If I have not hearkened now, I will again. Forgive me, good Gonzaga,” she begged him, with a sweetness no man could have resisted. And then a sigh fluttered from her lips; a sound that was like a sob came after it, and her hand closed upon his arm.
“They are breaking my heart, my friend. Oh, that you had left me at peace in the Convent of Santa Sofia!”
He turned to her, all solicitude and gentleness, to inquire the reason of her outburst.
“It is this odious alliance into which they seek to force me with that man from Babbiano. I have told Guidobaldo that I will not wed this Duke. But as profitably might I tell Fate that I will not die. The one is as unheeding as the other.”
Gonzaga sighed profoundly, in sympathy, but said nothing.
Here was a grief to which he could not minister, a grievance that he could do nothing to remove. She turned from him with a gesture of impatience.
“You sigh,” she exclaimed, “and you bewail the cruelty of the fate in store for me. But you can do nothing for me. You are all words, Gonzaga. You can call yourself more than my friend–my very slave. Yet, when I need your help, what do you offer me? A sigh!”
“Madonna, you are unjust,” he was quick to answer, with some heat. “I did not dream–I did not dare to dream–that it was my help you sought. My sympathy, I believed, was all that you invited, and so, lest I should seem presumptuous, it was all I offered. But if my help you need; if you seek a means to evade this alliance that you rightly describe as odious, such help as it lies in a man’s power to render shall you have from me.”
He spoke almost fiercely and with a certain grim confidence, for all that as yet no plan had formed itself in his mind.
Indeed, had a course been clear to him, there had been perhaps less confidence in his tone, for, after all, he was not by nature a man of action, and his character was the very reverse of valiant. Yet so excellent an actor was he as to deceive even himself by his acting, and in this suggestion of some vague fine deeds that he would do, he felt himself stirred by a sudden martial ardour, and capable of all. He was stirred, too, by the passion with which Valentina’s beauty filled him–a passion that went nearer to making a man of him than Nature had succeeded in doing.
That now, in the hour of her need, she should turn so readily to him for assistance, he accepted as proof that she was not deaf to the voice of this great love he bore her, but of which he never yet had dared to show a sign. The passing jelousy that he had entertained for that wounded knight they had met at Acquasparta was laid to rest by her present attitude towards him, the knight, himself forgotten.