"What a silken mesh, my Molly! What a snare for a man in this lovely cloud! How fragrant of roses! Ah, most beautiful wife, you could lead all Italy by a strand of this miraculous hair."
She was pleased with his praises, touched and grateful; she kissed him for them. So they grew more friendly than they had been ever since the Bentivoglio had shocked her modesty and faith in him at once. Amilcare rattled on; love-talk comes easily to the Italian tongue, whose very vocables are caresses.
Gradually he drew in and in to the Borgia, centre of all his spinning thought.
"There is a lover of yours, for instance!" he said, comically aghast; and Molly laughed.
"Why, Amilcare, you make all the world to be my lover, all the world to look at me through your eyes. Believe it, they see me truer than you do. I am a very simple person."
Amilcare began to count upon his fingers, one hand meeting the other round Molly's caught waist.
"The Borgia, the Count of Cavalcalupo, Oreste Colonna, Negroponte, three Bishops at Sesto, Bianca Maria, Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, Ordelaffi, Benti——"
She stopped him there with a hand on his mouth. "Pah, the horrible man!"
Amilcare gaily struggled for vent, and—"voglio!" he concluded the word. "You may not relish the trophy, my wife; but him you undoubtedly charmed. And now Don Cesare is coming. Him also it will be as needful as easy to please."