He shuddered and put his hand on Ligozzi's shoulder, speaking eagerly.
"Such things cannot happen, Ligozzi, can they? It cannot be I shall never see her again! God cannot mean that—though He take all from me, though He humiliate me before my enemy, He cannot mean that! No! Visconti is not leagued with Heaven: it cannot be! it cannot be!"
"No," said Ligozzi; "even Visconti would not dare to harm the Duchess. Ye will see her again, my lord."
Della Scala turned away to the other end of the tent; it was plain to him Ligozzi's heart was not in the comfort that he gave, that he thought with the others that they would do well to fall back from Milan, join the Estes, and hold the towns they had.
"But they do not understand," said Mastino in his heart. "I will never go back alive—without my wife."
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT THE VIPER
The Duke of Milan had sent a secret embassy to Mastino della Scala, lying crushed outside Milan—a secret embassy he had long been meditating. The master-stroke of his policy should be the Duke of Verona's ruin, and his complete triumph.
And the moment of his sending was well chosen. The two days of which Mastino spoke had passed. The answer from d'Este at Novara had been unfavorable. His plans, he said, were to march back to Modena and Ferrara, protecting that part of Lombardy, held now by Julia Gonzaga's men alone, against Visconti; he would wait for his army to come up; he would wait for Mastino, but not long; his duty lay inside Modena and Ferrara, not outside the hopeless walls of Milan.