'Do you thank God for it,' said Bellarion, unabashed. 'It is time some one gave these things their proper names so as to remove all misconception. Do you know whither Barbaresco and these other fools are thrusting you, madonna? Straight into the hands of the strangler.'
Having conquered her anger once, she was not easily to be betrayed into it again.
'If that is all you have to tell me, sir, I will leave you. I'll not remain to hear my friends and peers maligned by a base knave to whom I speak by merest accident.'
'Not accident, madonna.' His tone was impressive. 'A base knave I may be. But base by birth alone. These others whom you trust and call your peers are base by nature. Ah, wait! It was no accident that brought me!' he cried, and this with a sincerity from which none could have suspected the violence he did to his beliefs. 'Ask yourself why I should come again to do more than is required of me, at some risk to myself? What are your affairs, or the affairs of the State of Montferrat, to me? You know what I am and what my aims. Why, then, should I tarry here? Because I cannot help myself. Because the will of Heaven has imposed itself upon me.'
His great earnestness, his very vehemence, which seemed to invest his simple utterances with a tone of inspiration, impressed her despite herself, as he intended that they should. Nor did she deceive him when she dissembled this in light derision.
'An archangel in a painter's smock!'
'By Saint Hilary, that is nearer the truth than you suppose it.'
She smiled, yet not entirely without sourness. 'You do not lack a good opinion of yourself.'
'You may come to share it when I've said all that's in my mind. I have told you, madonna, whither these crack-brained adventurers are thrusting you, so that they may advance themselves. Do you know the true import of the conspiracy? Do you know what they plan, these fools? The murder of the Marquis Theodore.'
She stared at him round-eyed, afraid. 'Murder?' she said in a voice of horror.