'You'll tell me, perhaps, that you deceived the Lord Facino himself with that pretence?' And now without waiting for an answer, she demolished him with the batteries of her contempt. 'In so great a pretender even that were possible. You pretended to lay down your life at Travo, yet behold you resurrected to garner the harvest which that trick has earned you.'
'Oh, shameful!' he cried out, stirred to anger by a suspicion so ignoble.
'Are you not rewarded and knighted for the stir that was made by the rumour of your death? You are to give proof of your knightly worth in the lists to-morrow. It will be interesting.'
On that she left him standing there with wounds in his soul that would take long to heal. When at last he swung away, a keen eye observed the pallor of his face and the loss of assurance from his carriage; the eye of Facino's lady who approached him on her lord's arm.
'You are pale, Bellarion,' she commented in pure malice, having watched his long entertainment with the Princess of Montferrat.
'Indeed, madonna, I am none so well.'
'Not ailing, Bellarion?' There was some concern in Facino's tone and glance.
And there and then the rogue saw his opportunity and took it.
'It will be nothing.' He passed a hand across his brow.
'The excitement following upon the strain of these last days.'