But even upon that her malice fastened. 'It will be falling still more heavily in the hills about Bergamo where Pandolfo rules ...'
He span round to interrupt her, and his voice rasped with sarcasm.
'And not quite so heavily in the plain about Piacenza, where Ottone Buonterzo is tyrant. If you please, madonna, we will change the subject.'
'I do not please.'
'But I do.' His voice beat upwards to the tones that had reduced whole squadrons to instant obedience.
The lady laughed, and none too tunefully. She drew her rich cloak of ermine more closely about her shapely figure.
'And of course what you please is ever to be the law. We come when you please, and we depart again as soon as you are tired of country solitude.'
He stared at her frowning, a little puzzled. 'Why, Bice,' he said slowly, 'I never before knew you attached to Abbiategrasso. You have ever made a lament of being brought hither, and you deafened me with your complaints three months ago when we left Milan.'
'Which, nevertheless, did not restrain you from forcing me to come.'
'That does not answer me.' He advanced towards her. 'What is this sudden attachment to the place? Why this sudden reluctance to return to the Milan you profess to love, the gaieties of the court in which you strain to shine?'