One autumn day when a northerly wind from the distant snows brought a sting which the bright sunshine scarcely sufficed to temper, Bellarion and the Countess Beatrice, following the flight of a falcon that had been sent soaring to bring down a strong-winged heron, came to the edge of an affluent of the Ticino, now brown and swollen from recent rains, on the very spot where Duke Gian Maria had loosed his hounds upon Bellarion.
They brought up there perforce just as overhead the hawk stooped for the third time. Twice before it had raked wide, but now a hoarse cry from the heron announced the strike almost before it could be seen, then both birds plumbed down to earth, the spread of the falcon's great wings, steadying the fall.
One of the four grooms that followed sprang down, lure in hand, to recapture the hawk and retrieve the game.
Bellarion looked on in silence with brooding eyes, heedless of the satisfaction the Countess was expressing with almost childish delight.
'A brave kill! A brave kill!' she reiterated, and looked to him in vain for agreement. A frown descended upon the white brow of that petulant beauty, rendered by vanity too easily sensitive to disapproval and too readily resentful. Directly she challenged him. 'Was it not a brave kill, Bellarion?'
He roused himself from his abstraction, and smiled a little. He found her petulance amusing ever, and commonly provoked her by the display of that amusement.
'I was thinking of another heron that almost fell a victim here.' And he told her that this was the spot on which he had met the dogs.
'So that we're on holy ground,' said she, enough resentment abiding to provoke the sneer.
But it went unheeded. 'And from that my thoughts ran on to other things.' He pointed across the river. 'That way I came from Montferrat.'
'And why so gloomy about that? You've surely no cause to regret your coming?'