Carrara, florid, pleasant-mannered, with brilliant black eyes, black hair, and a ready smile, leaned forward and listened, observing him keenly. Opposite them, but the length of the table away, a lady with tired eyes and a patient mouth leaned back in her chair, motionless, watching the trees seen through the window.
She was Julia Gonzaga, the representative in this gathering in the name of her infant nephew, of the city of Mantua and its domains, the head of the fourth and last great family of Lombardy who dared to raise a hand against the encroachments and the power of Visconti.
But if at this end of the chamber the only sound was low converse, all subdued and quiet, at the farther end gay voices and bursts of laughter broke the stillness.
For seated in the broad window-seat, toying with a sprig of myrtle, was Count Conrad, brilliant and light-hearted, clad in the last extreme of fashion, resplendent in primrose velvet and mauve silk, with long scalloped sleeves that swept the ground.
Around his waist was a gold belt suspending, by a jeweled chain, an orange stuck with cloves and enclosed in a case of silver filigree.
Count Conrad also wore ear-rings, pearl drops that shimmered through his blond curls, and on each wrist a bracelet; yet even this effeminacy could not altogether destroy a certain manliness that was the Count's, spite of an almost seeming wish to disallow it.
Beside him, half-leaning through the window, was a youth of twenty, of that brilliant beauty too bright to last.
He too was dressed more like an idle courtier of the Valois court than a fighting noble of the free cities, and the rare charm of his face was marred by the spoiled affectation of his manner.
"Another war!" laughed Conrad. "I have done naught but fight since I left Germany. I am on the sick list."
"Not when the war is of thine own seeking," said Vincenzo. "Because thou needs must fall in love with the Visconti's sister—as if there were not others as fair and far safer to woo!"