But once alone with his enforced visitor in the stone passage, dimly lighted by that single candle, his lordship's manner changed.
'Who the devil are you, and what the devil do you seek?'
Bellarion showed his fine teeth in a broad smile, all sign of his intoxication vanished. 'If you had not already answered those questions for yourself, you would neither have admitted me nor parted with your ducat, sir. I am what you were quick to suppose me. To the watch, I am your cousin, lodging with you on a visit to Casale. Lest you should repudiate me, I mentioned the half-ducat as a password.'
'It was resourceful of you,' Barbaresco grunted. 'Who sent you?'
'Lord! The unnecessary questions that you ask! Why, the Lady Valeria, of course. Behold!' Under the eyes of Messer Barbaresco he flashed the broken half of a ducat.
His lordship took the golden fragment, and holding it near the candle-flame read the half of the date inscribed upon it, then returned it to Bellarion, inviting him at last to come above-stairs.
They went up, Barbaresco leading, to a long, low-ceilinged chamber of the mezzanine, the walls of which were hung with soiled and shabby tapestries, the floor of which had been unswept for weeks. His lordship lighted a cluster of candles in a leaden candle-branch, and their golden light further revealed the bareness of the place, its sparse and hard-worn furnishings heavy with dust. He drew an armchair to the table where writing-implements and scattered papers made an untidy litter. He waved his guest to a seat, and asked his name.
'Bellarion.'
'I never heard of the family.'
'I never heard of it myself. But that's no matter. It's a name that serves as well as another.'