"Small credit not to wander where you love to rest," said Antonio.
"And yet youth goes in waiting, and delights missed come not again," said she, leaning towards him with a light in her eyes, and scanning his fair hair and bronzed cheek, his broad shoulders and the sinewy hands that nursed his knee.
"It may well be that they will not come to me," he said. "For the Duke has a halter ready for my throat, if by force or guile he can take me."
She started at these words, searching his face; but he was calm and innocent of any hidden meaning. She forced a laugh as she said, twisting a curl of her hair round her finger, "The more reason to waste no time, my Lord Antonio."
Antonio shook his head and said lightly, "But I think he cannot take me by force, and I know of no man in all the Duchy that would betray me to a shameful death."
"And of no woman?" she asked, glancing at him from under drooping lashes.
"No, for I have wronged none; and women are not cruel."
"Yet there may be some, my lord, who call you cruel and therefore would be cruel in vengeance. A lover faithful as you can have but one friend among women."
"I know of none such," he laughed. "And surely the vengeance would be too great for the offence, if there were such."
"Nay, I know not that," said Venusta, frowning.