A Jay of Italy

by Bernard Capes

'Dear lord, so kind and loyal. Tell him that without him we find ourselves astray.'

'Ay.'

'Tell him that from this moment his Duchess will aid and abet him in all his reforms.'

'I will tell him.'

'Ask him—' she hesitated, and turned away her sweet head—'doth he seek to retaliate on his mistress's innocent confidence, that, by absenting himself, he would turn it to her undoing?'

Carlo grunted.

'By your Grace's leave, an I find him, I will put it my way.'

She acquiesced with a meek, lovely smile, and the words of the Mass: 'Ite, missa est!'

And when he was gone, she sighed, and looked in a mirror and murmured to herself in a semi-comedy of grief: 'Alas! too weak to be Messalina! I must be good if he asks me.'

And, being weak, she let her thoughts drift.