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Involuntarily he gripped the hilt of the sword he carried beneath the cloak, pressed to his naked body. After all, with a fellow like Lorenzi one must be prepared for any tricks. At that instant he heard a gentle rattling, and knew it was made by the grating of Marcolina's window hi opening. Then both wings of the window were drawn back, though the curtain still veiled the interior.
"I have not a single gold piece left," said Lorenzi wearily. "Really?" "Not one," asserted Lorenzi, as if tired of the whole matter. "Never mind," said the Marchese, with a sudden assumption of amiability which was far from congenial. "I will trust you as far as ten ducats goes, or even for a larger sum if needs must." "All right, a ducat, then," said Lorenzi, taking up the card dealt to him.
"As for you, Lorenzi," added the Marchese, "when your reputation has reached as far as that of Signor Casanova, Chevalier de Seingalt, we shall be willing enough, should you so desire, to give you also the title of Chevalier."
"What if I were to throw away my sword?" thought Casanova. "What if I were to embrace him?" He slipped the cloak from his shoulders and stood like Lorenzi, lean and naked. Lorenzi lowered his point in salute, in accordance with the rules of fence. Casanova returned the salute. Next moment they crossed blades, and the steel glittered like silver in the sun.
The Marchese had brought Lorenzi to the house only a few weeks before. A man of the Chevalier's wide experience would hardly need prompting to enlighten him as to the nature of the young officer's relationship to the Marchesa. After all, if the husband had no objection, the affair was nobody else's business.
The former ate sweets and repeated his proverbial tags. The latter watched the turn of the cards with eager attention. At length the Marchese had lost five hundred ducats to Casanova and Lorenzi. The Marchesa moved to depart, and looked significantly at the Lieutenant on her way out of the room. Amalia accompanied her guest.
Growing bolder, he asked himself: "Why am I creeping in disguise to Marcolina? Is not Casanova a better man than Lorenzi, even though he be thirty years older? Is not she the one woman who would have understood the incomprehensible? Was it needful to commit this lesser rascality, and to mislead another man into the commission of a greater rascality?
"But where, my dear Olivo, is the Chevalier de Seingalt of whom you speak?" enquired Lorenzi in his clear, insolent voice. Casanova's first impulse was to throw the contents of his glass in Lorenzi's face. Amalia touched his arm lightly, to restrain him, and said: "Many people to-day, Chevalier, still know you best by the old and more widely renowned name of Casanova."
He was thinking of the heading in big black print at the top of the interview: "Romantic Climax to the Northmorland-Lorenzi Case. Only Brother of Lord Northmorland to Marry the Daughter of Dead Canadian Claimant. "We've nothing to be ashamed of everything to be proud of," Miss Lorenzi went on.
At this, Miss Lorenzi, whom I had never seen before, thought proper to leave us, and I told my man that I was not at home to anybody. I ordered breakfast to be served to the companion of the nymph, that she might not find the waiting tedious.
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