Bellarion the Fortunate

by Rafael Sabatini

The captains clanked out, and the door closed. Slowly Carmagnola turned; reproachfully he regarded her.

'Have you no faith in me, Valeria? Should I do this thing if there were any room for doubt?'

'You may be mistaken. You have been mistaken before, remember.'

He did not like to remember it. 'And you? Have you been mistaken all these years? Are you mistaken on the death of your friend Count Spigno and what followed?'

'Ah! I was forgetting that,' she confessed.

'Remember it. And remember what he said at that table, which may, after all, be the truth. That Count Spigno has risen from the grave at last for vengeance.'

'Will you not send for this clown, at least?' cried Gian Giacomo.

'To what purpose now? What can he add to what we know? The matter, Lord Marquis, is finished.'

And meanwhile Belluno was seeking Bellarion in the small chamber in which they had confined him on the ground floor of the castle.

With perfect composure Bellarion heard the words of doom. He did not believe them. This sudden thing was too monstrously impossible. It was incredible the gods should have raised him so swiftly to his pinnacle of fame, merely to cast him down again for their amusement. They might make sport with him, but they would hardly carry it to the lengths of quenching his life.