'Body of God!' Barbaresco came to his feet, his great face purple, the veins of his temples standing forth like cords Whilst appearing unmoved, Bellarion braced his muscles for action.
The attack came. But only in words. Barbaresco heaped horrible and obscene abuse upon Bellarion's head. 'You infamous fool! You triple ass! You chattering ape!' With these, amongst other terms, the young man found himself bombarded. 'Get you back to her, and tell her, you numskulled baboon, that there was never any such intention.'
'But was there not?' Bellarion cried with almost shrill ingenuousness of tone. 'Yet Count Spigno ...'
'Devil take Count Spigno, fool. Heed me. Carry my message to her highness.'
'I carry no lies,' said Bellarion firmly, and rose with great dignity.
'Lies!' gurgled Barbaresco.
'Lies,' Bellarion insisted. 'Let us have done with them. To her highness I expressed as a suspicion what in my mind was a clear conviction. The words Count Spigno used, and your anxiety to silence him, could leave no doubt in any man of wit, and I am that, I hope, my lord. If you will have this message carried, you will first show me the ends you serve by its falsehood, and let me, who am in this thing as deep as any, be the judge of whether it is justified.'
Before this firmness the wrath went out of Barbaresco. Weakly he wrung his hands a moment, then sank sagging into his chair.
'If the others, if Cavalcanti or Casella, had known how much you had understood, you would never have left this house alive, lest you should do precisely what you have done.'
'But if it is on her behalf—hers and her brother's—that you plan this thing, why should you not take her feeling first? What else is right or fair?'