'Not Messer Stoffel. The witness I prefer waits in your antechamber, highness.' He stepped quickly to the door, followed by the Regent's surprised glance. He pulled it open, and at once Facino was revealed to them, grave of countenance, leaning upon his crutch.
The Regent made a noise in his throat, as Facino hobbled in to take the parchments which Bellarion proffered him. Thereafter there was a spell of dreadful silence broken at last by the Lord Theodore who was unable longer to control himself.
'You miserable trickster! You low-born, swaggering Judas! I should have known better than to trust you! I should have known that you'd be true to your false, shifty nature. You dirty fox!'
'A trickster! A Judas! A fox!' Bellarion appealed mildly to the company against the injustice of these epithets. 'But why such violence of terms? Could I in loyalty to my adoptive father put my signature to this contract until it had received his approval?'
'You mock me, you vile son of a dog!'
Facino looked up. His face was stern, his eyes smouldered.
'Think of some fouler epithet, my lord, so that I may cast it at you. So far no term that you have used will serve my need.'
That gave Theodore pause in his reviling of another. But only for a moment. Almost at once he was leaping furiously towards Facino. The feral nature under his silken exterior was now displayed. He was a man of his hands, this Regent of Montferrat, and, beggared of words to meet the present case, he was prepared for deeds. Suddenly he found Bellarion in his way, the bold, mocking eyes level with his own, and Bellarion's right hand was behind his back, where the heavy dagger hung.
'Shall we be calm?' Bellarion was saying. 'There are half a dozen men of mine in the anteroom if you want violence.'
He fell back, and for all that his eyes still glared he made an obvious effort to regain his self-command. It was difficult in the face of Facino's contemptuous laughter and the words Facino was using.