"Ah!" cried Visconti as if a sudden thought had struck him, "who else then, da Ribera?"
"I cannot tell, only there is a dead lady in the garden; she is laid as if sleeping on the grass, quite dead."
Visconti rose so suddenly that the sweep of his long sleeve sent the glasses crashing to the ground, and made Arezzo start.
"It is Isotta d'Este!" he cried. "Mastino's wife!"
"Isotta dead?" cried de Lana, and the words echoed around the room. "How should she be here, and dead?"
"The dead only can answer you," said Visconti. "Now I can recall what 'twas Mastino said—something about her! Still, it may not be his duchess. As you say, how should she be dead, and here?"
"How should she be dead?" asked de Lana again. "Yet truly what else——" he paused, keeping back his words, and his glance met the secretary's.
Giannotto was remembering something: the figure of Visconti standing sullen, with a moody face, thinking on another dead woman; "Had she lived I would not have done it!" he had said. The secretary rose; now he understood.
In this triumphant Visconti there was no sign of the spirit that had prompted that murmur, but the secretary understood.