For he thought that she wept because he had scorned the love in which her words declared her to hold him, and he was sorry. But she made no answer.
And he went on, "I pray you, do not weep. For think not that I am blind to your beauty or to the sweet kindness which you have bestowed upon me. And in all things that I may, I will truly and faithfully serve you to my death."
Then she raised her head and she said, "That will not be long, Antonio."
"I know not, but for so long as it may be," said he.
"It will not be long," she said again, and burst into quick passionate sobs, that shook her and left her at last breathless and exhausted.
Antonio looked at her for a while and said, "There is something that you do not tell me. Yet if it be anything that causes you pain or shame, you may tell me as readily as you would any man. For I am not a hard man, and I have many things on my own conscience that forbid me to judge harshly of another."
She raised her head and she lifted her hand into the air. The stillness of evening had fallen, and a light wind blew up from the plain. There seemed no sound save from the flowing of the river and the gentle rustle of the trees.
"Hark!" said she. "Hark! hark!" and with every repetition of the word her voice rose till it ended in a cry of terror.
Antonio set his hand to his ear and listened intently. "It is the sound of men's feet on the rocky path," said he, smiling. "Tommasino returns, and I doubt not that he brings your jewels with him. Will you not give him a smiling welcome? Aye, and to me also your smiles would be welcome. For your weeping melts my heart, and the dimness of your eyes is like a cloud across the sun."
Venusta's sobs had ceased, and she looked at Antonio with a face calm, white, and set. "It is not the Lord Tommasino," she said. "The men you hear are the Duke's men;" and then and there she told him the whole. Yet she spoke as though neither he nor any other were there, but as though she rehearsed for her own ear some lesson that she had learnt; so lifeless and monotonous was her voice as it related the shameful thing. And at last she ended saying, "Thus in an hour you will be dead, or captured and held for a worse death. It is I who have done it." And she bent her head again to meet her hands; yet she did not cover her face, but rested her chin on her hands, and her eyes were fixed immovably on Count Antonio.