She had fallen back a little, and momentarily turned aside. Suddenly she faced him again, breathless and very white. Her long narrow eyes seemed to grow longer and narrower. Her expression was not nice.
'Why, what are you assuming?' There was now no music in her voice. It was harshly metallic. 'Has soldiering made you fatuous by chance?' She laughed unpleasantly, as upon a sudden scorn-provoking revelation. 'I see! I see! You thought that I ...! You thought ...! Why, you fool! You poor, vain fool! Shall I tell Facino what you thought, and how you have dared to insult me with it?'
He stood bewildered, aghast, and indignant. He sought to recall her exact expressions. 'You used words, madonna ...' he was beginning hotly when suddenly he checked, and when he resumed the indignation had all gone out of him. 'What you have said is very just. I am a fool, of course. You will give me leave?'
He made to go, but she had not yet done with him.
'I used words, you say. What words? What words that could warrant your assumptions? I said that I had mourned you. It is true. As a mother might have mourned you. But you ... You could think ...' She swung past him, towards the open loggia. 'Go, sir. Go wait elsewhere for my lord.'
He departed without another word, not indeed to await Facino, whom he did not see again until the morrow, a day which for him was very full.
Betimes he was sought by the Lord Gabriello Maria, who came at the request of the Commune of Milan to conduct him to the Ragione Palace, there to receive the thanks of the representatives of the people.
'I desire no thanks, and I deserve none.' His manner was almost sullen.
'You'll receive them none the less. To disregard the invitation were ungracious.'
And so the Lord Gabriello carried off Bellarion, the son of nobody, to the homage of the city. In the Communal Palace he listened to a recital by the President of his shining virtues and still more shining services, in token of their appreciation of which the fathers of the Ambrosian city announced that they had voted him the handsome sum of ten thousand gold florins. In other words, they had divided between himself and Facino the sum they had been intending to award the latter for delivering the city from the menace of Buonterzo.