"She has had so much to bear, poor child—so young—and her heart is broken already with sorrow for her husband. For she had faith in him. And now!—Have they no feeling for her?"
"Madre, carissima, thou knowest not Rizzo; he is the most powerful among them, and the most ill-disposed. 'Let her take the Prince of Naples,' he hath said openly before the Councillors, 'and give us a man to reign over us.'"
"And Janus but two weeks dead!" The Lady Beata gave an involuntary cry of horror. "But Fabrici, the Archbishop?" she asked after a moment, "may he not influence them to be more gentle with her—having a brother in the Council?"
Aluisi shook his head sorrowfully. "Nay, Mother—I know not which is worse. Venice, at his election, would have prevented it, but could not, because he represented this intriguing power of Naples which hath not ceased from effort to have its will of Cyprus, since the betrothal of Caterina—which also it sought to overthrow."
"How knowest thou?"
He laid his finger on his lips—"If we were yet in Venice, I might not answer thee; but here—and it is for me and thee alone—it was I upon whom the Signoria laid the task of drawing up their monitory letter to Janus to hold him to his contract."
"Oh, if thou hadst not done it! I would rather thou hadst not written it!" she said with a low moan.
"Aye—Mother: and I—even then I knew that it must be happier for the child if that contract might be broken. Though if I had dreamed of this I could not have doomed one of our Casa Cornaro to such suffering and dishonor. But thou knowest the pride of Venice: if not my hand, another's would have written it: and I then—we should not have been here to shield her."
"But the Archbishop Fabrici cannot hold malice against Caterina. He hath all the church of Cyprus in his command; he must be friendly to the Queen."
But Aluisi's face gave her no hope, as she turned to him.