And he rose, triumphant, smiling, resting his hand on the arras that hid the door behind him.
The secretary gazed upon him fascinated.
Lifting the arras, he paused again, and looked back with a smile that transformed his face.
"In that too have I succeeded!" he said melodiously; and, opening the narrow door, he was gone, as always, noiselessly.
The secretary shook himself.
"Why does he unburden his soul to me?" he murmured. "Does he think, because I sit silent, I have no ears, no memory—that I shall forget? 'In that too have I succeeded!' Aye, thou hast it all thine own way, Visconti, so far."
With a slight shrug of the shoulders Giannotto fell to writing.
When his pages were finished, he put them into his bag for the Duke to sign, and grumbled at his absence, stayed, but dared not follow. Presently he decided to take his own dismissal.
As he rose to go he remembered Valentine Visconti, flying through the garden after her secret visit, and he considered, if she could bribe him to silence heavily enough to make it worth his while to venture an encounter with her.