‘Sir,’ answered the Countess, ‘that is not the way to address a lady of my condition. You are basely betraying my noble husband, who entertains for you both friendship and esteem.’
Here Grifo joined in the conversation and began to persuade the Countess that every noble lady of the time had her ‘confederate knight.’ No doubt he knew that she loved Orsini in spite of herself, and when he had done speaking he went away, and the two were alone together in the night.
An hour later Virginio took his leave of her, and now he told her with words of comfort that he would presently send her poison by the hand of Grifo, that she might do away with her husband; for otherwise he must soon learn the truth and avenge himself on them all three. But Ginevra was already stung by remorse.
‘I have dishonoured my husband for you,’ she answered. ‘But I will not do the deed you ask of me. It is better that I should myself die than that I should do murder.’
‘In that case,’ answered Orsini, ‘I myself must put him beyond the possibility of harming you.’
Thereupon he left her; but she was tormented by remorse, until at last she went to her husband and told him all, and entreated him to kill her. He would not believe her, but thought she had gone mad, though she repeated her story again and again; and at last he rose and went and found Grifo, the traitor, and dragged him to her room.
‘Is it true,’ she asked, ‘that you brought the Governor here to my chamber unawares?’
The man denied it with an oath. Then Ginevra snatched up a dagger and set the point at Grifo’s breast. He saw that he was lost, and told the truth, and then and there the woman whose ruin he had wrought did justice on him and was avenged, and stabbed him again and again, that he died.
There ends the story, for that is all we know. After that the chronicle is silent, ominously silent; and when the castle of Illasi was dismantled a walled niche was found in one of the towers, and within the niche there was a woman’s skeleton. That is known, surely; but that the bones were those of the Countess Ginevra there is no proof to show.
I should say that Grifo belonged to the type of the bravi, so that the crimes of passion which his betrayal