"Giannotto," said the Duke smoothly, "you will come with me on the march to-morrow—not for love of your company, my friend, but because I do not trust you. Still, I keep you."
"There is now no Lady Valentine to outwit me in your absence with some of her brother's skill, my lord," replied the secretary meekly.
Visconti made no reply, but viewed the secretary sullenly. His words had brought up unpleasant memories: his palace was free of his rebel sister, but it was free also of another one who should have been his wife.
All his brilliant, his magical successes could not quite obliterate the sting of that one failure. Graziosa's name was a forbidden one; the splendid dwelling where she had shone so brief a while, shut to moulder. She was a thing of the past, though only ten days dead; but Visconti could not quite forget.
She had been buried quietly, in the same church as her father, at dead of night, with no mourners. And was she not gone—forgotten? Yet, disguise it as he might, it was failure.
"Yet she loved me," thought Visconti; and it roused his wrath that he must think of her—the house by the western gate—the sweet face, the white roses.
"Giannotto," he said moodily, "had she lived, I would not have done it—on my soul I would not have done it!"
"Done what, my lord?" asked the startled secretary, looking up at his dark, musing face.
"Ah, I forgot," said Visconti. "You do not know."