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In particular I pondered the meaning of the crowd's strange attitude. Nor was it a riddle difficult to resolve. It was evident that believing Gambara, as they did, to be Giuliana's lover, and informed perhaps invention swelling rumour as it will that the Cardinal-legate had ridden late last night to Fifanti's house, it had been put about that the foul murder done there was Messer Gambara's work.
But, though heard, it was scarcely heard consciously, and it certainly went unheeded until it was beneath the window and ceasing at the door. Giuliana's fingers locked themselves upon my arm in a grip of fear. "Who comes?" she asked, below her breath, fearfully. I sprang from the bed and crouched, listening, by the window, and so lost precious time.
But to gain the library I had to pass the door of Giuliana's room. It stood open, and Giuliana herself in the doorway. We looked at each other, and seeing her so sorrowful, with tears in her great dark eyes, I stepped forward to speak, to utter something of the deep sympathy that stirred me. She stretched forth a hand to me. I took it and held it tight, looking up into her eyes.
By a great ill-chance it happened that the sword which I had worn upon that day when I went as Giuliana's escort into Piacenza was still standing in the very corner where I had set it down. Instinctively I sprang for it, and Fifanti, never suspecting my quest until he saw me with a naked iron in my hand, did nothing to prevent my reaching it. Seeing me armed, he laughed. "Ho, ho!
Out of the darkness Giuliana's voice spoke again, hoarsely now and trembling. "It will be Astorre," she said, with conviction. "At this hour it can be none else. I suspected when I saw him talking to that boy at the gate this afternoon that he was setting a spy upon me, to warn him wherever he was lurking, did the need arise."
Midway down the passage I halted. I was level with Giuliana's door, and from under it there came a slender blade of light. But it was not this that checked me. She was singing, Such a pitiful little heartbroken song it was: "Amor mi muojo; mi muojo amore mio!" ran its last line. I leaned against the wall, and a sob broke from me.
He peered at it very closely, being without glasses, and screwed his eyes up until they all but disappeared. Thus he stood, and slowly read, whilst I looked on a trifle uneasy, and Giuliana's face wore an odd look of fear, her bosom heaving unsteadily in its russet sheath. He sniffed contemptuously when he had read, and looked at me.
It is not he who has dared to raise his eyes as you suppose to Bianca. Were such the case, I should have killed him with my hands were he twenty times the Duke of Parma. No, no. My Bianca is being honourably wooed by your cousin Cosimo." I looked at him, amazed. It could not be. I remembered Giuliana's words.
One night as I sat in the gallery above the great hall, watching them footing it upon the mosaic floor below, Giuliana's deep, slow voice behind me stirred me out of my musings. She had espied me up there and had come to join me, although hitherto I had most sedulously avoided her, neither addressing her nor giving her the opportunity to address me since the first brazen speech on her arrival.
I was trembling under her touch trembling, my every nerve a-quiver and my breath shortened and suddenly there flashed through my mind a line of Dante's in the story of Paolo and Francesca: "Quel giorno piu non vi leggemo avanti." Giuliana's words: "Let us read no more to-day" had seemed an echo of that line, and the echo made me of a sudden conscious of an unsuspected parallel.
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