'Oh, madonna! Into what irreparable error is your generous heart misleading you? How can you have come in a breath to place all your trust in this man whom for years you have known, as many know him, for a scheming villain?'
'Could I do less having discovered the cruelty of my error?'
'Are you sure—can you be sure upon such slight grounds—that you were in error? That you are not in error now? You heard what Belluno said of him on the night my bridges were destroyed—that Bellarion never looks where he aims.'
'That, sir, is what has misled me, to my present shame.'
'Is it not rather what is misleading you now?'
'You heard what Messer Barbaresco had to tell me.'
'I do not need to hear Messer Barbaresco or any other. I know what I can see for myself, what my wits tell me.'
She looked at him almost slyly, for one normally so wide-eyed, and her answer all considered was a little cruel.
'Are you still unshaken in your confidence in your wits? Do you still think that you can trust them?'
That was the death-blow to his passion for her, as it was the death-blow of the high hopes he is suspected of having centred in her, seeing himself, perhaps, as the husband of the Princess Valeria of Montferrat, supreme in Montferrine court and camp. It was a sword-thrust full into his vanity, which was the vital part of him.