"Alack! good Grifone, what sayings are these for a day that should be happy?" urged the warm-hearted girl, with eyes ready to fill.
"Madonna, let me endure the thought of them alone, I entreat your Grace."
"Never, while I live, Grifone. You make me most unhappy. Will you not kiss me?"
"Never, while I live, Madonna, if I am to live honest."
Molly went white and red, and stood hesitating, uncertain whether to cry or be angry. Either might have been a vent for her distress, which was real. Commanding herself with pains—
"I will require you to speak with me after supper," she said, after a pause for the struggle.
Grifone bowed his head and backed away from her. She, being boundless in capacity for the affections of her kind, spent the interval with an aching heart.
Directly supper was done she hunted for the Secretary. The affair had by now throbbed itself into a question of her physical ease. Her heartstrings were at a dangerous stretch, she quivering at the point of tears. Master Grifone, for his part, had taken very good care that the Duke of Nona should be occupied, and himself not hard to find. Molly came upon him in a gallery of arras; caught him crouching there with his face hidden in his hands. She went to him at once, full of the trouble he showed her, sat by him, put her arm round his neck, and tried to draw his head up. Grifone turned her a white, miserable face.
"Ah!" he said, husky with reproach, "ah! you have come with the ardours of an angel leaping in you; yet no cruelty could in truth be sharper."
"Cruel? Cruel? Oh, Grifone, nobody has ever said this of me before!" whimpered poor Molly. She was swirling in wilder water than she knew.