The inner door opened as smoothly as silently, and Visconti stood there looking at the trio. He was dressed in purple velvet, but his doublet was tumbled, the fine lace frills at his wrists were torn to rags, his eyes strained wide open, and for a moment, as it was with any who encountered it, his expression gave his sister pause. But again she remembered Conrad lived, and she held out the parchment. "I thought it well to give you this," she said.
Gian advanced and took it in silence. But those torn ruffles, that disordered doublet, had their meanings, and the look in those wide eyes, as he turned them on her, quelled the mockery in hers, spite of herself.
"Begone!" he said, "and do not usurp another's office again. Leave me."
"With thine own thoughts, brother?" she said softly, facing him.
"Be careful," he answered; "thou shouldst know my humors, and that 'tis dangerous to cross them. Remember it only suits my purpose that thou shouldst live!"
At this Tisio, as if half-comprehending the threat, rose, and his brother's eyes fell on him.
"Thou too! What dost thou about my doors? hast thou come too to dare me with thy folly?"
His eyes blazed, his hands worked. Tisio, dazed and affrighted, let fall Graziosa's bracelet.
The page stooped to recover it.
"What hast thou there?" cried Visconti with sudden change of tone; and the page, quivering for his life, handed the bracelet on bent knee. Visconti studied it one second, then, with a sound of fury that sent the boy crouching back against the wall, control left him. His eyes lighted on Tisio, and in maniacal fury he seized him by the shoulder and shook him as though he were a rag.