“Go kill him!” she commanded.
“Certainly, Little Mistress,” he acquiesced, “but whom am I to kill?”
She explained.
Guntello, always parsimonious, asked a moderate sum for the purchase of a sabre and for road-money. She gave him ten times as much.
When he was gone, she felt, as at first, a painful numbness of exaltation. Almo was now certainly a dead man.
This mood suddenly inverted itself into an uncontrollable passion f solicitude. Off she posted to Flexinna and confessed everything to Vocco. In a frenzy she demanded they again borrow Nemestronia’s litter and that Vocco again accompany her to Aricia. To their expostulations she retorted that go she would, if not escorted by Vocco, then alone, if not disguised and in a borrowed litter, then in her own and openly, or openly in her carriage or afoot if need be; but go she would!
Flexinna succeeded in getting her to listen long enough to urge that there was no need for her to go personally, as Guntello would obey Vocco at sight of her signet ring, moreover that Guntello now had a long start and that only a swift horseman might hope to intervene in time. To these representations she yielded.
Vocco returned amazed and manifestly relieved. He had arrived too late. Guntello was dead.
That night Brinnaria wept long and bitterly.
“The poor, brave, harmless, faithful fellow,” she moaned. “Out of the malignity of my heart, in my pride and callousness, I sent him to an undeserved death! Oh, I am a wicked woman!” Strangely enough Guntello’s death seemed to divert her mind entirely from the idea of avenging herself on Almo. From hating him, she came to realize that she had really loved him all the while, that she loved him unalterably. From thinking that she desired his death she came to dread acutely that, exhausted in body by more than a hundred fights in ten months and worn by the strain of ceaseless anxiety and vigilance, Almo might succumb to even a chance-brought adversary.