"It is not the Dama Margherita de Iblin," Eloisà asked with sudden eager interest.
"The Lady Margherita!" Ecciva echoed with a scornful toss of her head. "Doth one seek a bride no longer young when one is a man like that? Nor—nor beautiful?—She is not beautiful!"
"She is more rare than beautiful," Eloisà retorted, piqued. "For she is noble, like the Signor Bernardini: and her face is like her soul."
"They should not trust their secrets to so young a maid!" the Lady Ecciva cried tauntingly.
She had suddenly flushed and grown pale again. Then a new thought came to her. "But she also is a Dama di Maridaggio—she also. Thou mightest tell that for a bit of gossip to the Queen, who, perchance, hath influence with the Signor Bernardini." She had laid her hand again on Eloisà's, with an insistent touch.
"Why dost thou say, she also?"
"That is for thy puzzle—to amuse thee, carinissima; for verily thy brain is dull. It is no wonder with the gravity of this court! But happily to-morrow—thou shalt see to-morrow how the people shout to him, for Cyprus doth owe him honor—and Her Majesty more than life. It is the Bernardini who hath done it all—more than the Soranzo, or the Mocenigo—more even than our great Admiral of Cyprus. Thou shalt see!"
Eloisà fell easily into praises of her hero, and her tongue was unsealed. "To go at night, with only a poor fishing-skiff and a handful of men, to steal back the little king from the galley of Naples—it was not easy! But how should one think of peril when the Prince was in danger?—They are both like that—he and she."
"All knights are like that, or they would be craven: that was no honor to him. But what woman went with him from the palace? I watched them going; it was a night like some great poem!"
"That was our dear Lady of the Bernardini; lest the Prince should be strange without some loving face about him, and none can smile him into quiet, as she with her gracious ways; and they feared a sound, for the galley lay close under the fortress. So quietly they went, along the shore, lingering where the nets are thrown by the shallows, to take the galley by surprise—the Lady of the Bernardini shrouded in the mantle of a fisher-woman."