'How? Does any one know how love is deserved of man or beast? Loose the rest of your pack. There's not a dog in it will do more than lick my hands. Dogs,' he added, again with a hint of mysteries, 'have perceptions oft denied to men.'
'Perceptions, eh? But what do they perceive?'
And Bellarion yielding to his singular exaltation laughed again as he answered: 'Ah! Who shall say?'
The Duke empurpled. 'Do you mock me, filth?'
Lonate, who was afraid of wizardry, laid a hand upon his arm. But the Duke shook off that admonitory grasp. 'You shall yield me your secret. You shall so, by the Host!' He turned to the gaping Squarcia. 'Call off the dogs, and make the knave fast. Fetch him along.'
On that the Duke rode off with his gentlemen, leaving the grooms to carry out his orders. They stood off reluctantly, despite Squarcia's commands, so that in the end for all his repugnance the kennel-master was constrained, himself, to take the task in hand. He whistled the dogs to heel, and left one of his knaves to leash them again. Then he approached Bellarion almost timidly.
'You heard the orders of his highness,' he said in the resigned voice of one who does a thing because he must.
Bellarion proffered his wrists in silence. The Duke and his following had almost reached the wood, and were out of earshot.
'It is the Duke who does this,' that black-browed scoundrel excused himself. 'I am but the instrument of the Duke.' And cringing a little he proceeded to do the pinioning, but lightly so that the thong should not hurt the prisoner, a tenderness exercised probably for the first time in his career as the villainous servant of a villainous master. His hands trembled at the task, which again was a thing that had never happened yet. The truth is that Squarcia was inspired by another fear as great as his dread of the supernatural. On both counts he desired to stand well with this young man.
He cast a glance over his shoulder to satisfy himself that the grooms were out of earshot.