“Your servant, Signore,” said he, as the door closed behind him.
There was a second of silence, broken by a snarl from the old count and a cry from Teresa—a sob of relief. She leaned against the wall, in the reaction suddenly faint. Her husband’s summons had filled her with apprehension—for she recalled the sound in the shrubbery—and his announcement, full of menace to Gordon, had shaken her mettle of resistance. She remembered an old story of a hired assassin whispered of him when she was a child. At the insane triumph and excitement in his manner she had been convinced and frightened. Terror had seized her anew—the shivering terror of him that had come to her on the monastery path and that her after-resentment had allayed.
Now, however, her fear calmed, indignation at what she deemed a ruse to compel an admission of concern that had but added to her husband’s fury, sent the blood back to her cheeks. All the repressed feeling that his cumulative humiliations had aroused burst their bonds. She turned on him with quivering speech:
“Evviva, Signore!” she said bitterly. “Are you not proud to have frightened a woman by this valorous trick? Have you other comedies to garnish the evening? Non importa—I leave them for your guest.”
Trevanion’s face wore a smile of relish as she swept from the room. He was certain now of two things. The old man hated George Gordon; the girl—was she daughter or wife?—did not. Had he unwittingly stumbled upon a chapter in the life of the man he trailed which he had not known? He seated himself with coolness, his inherent dare-deviltry flaunting to the surface.
Through the inflamed brain of the master of the casa, as he stared at him with his hawk eyes, were crowding suspicions. Paolo’s description had made him certain of the identity of the man in the garden. But his command to his secretary had named only the milord at the osteria. That the two were one and the same, Paolo could not have known—otherwise he would not have brought another. But how had he been deceived? How, unless the man before him was a confederate—had played the other’s part at the inn? It was a decoy, so the lover of his wife, with less risk in the amour, might laugh in his sleeve at him, the hoodwinked husband, the richest noble in Romagna! His lean fingers twitched.
“May I ask,” he queried, wetting his lips, “what the real milord—who is also in town to-day—pays you for filling his place to-night?”
Possessed as he was, his host could not mistake the other’s unaffected surprise. Before the start he gave, suspicion of collusion shredded thin.
“He is in Venice,” said Trevanion.
“He came to Ravenna this afternoon.”