“I believe you, Messer Francesco. Indeed, I am sure your act was wisdom itself.”
Gonzaga gnawed his lip.
“I may be wrong,” said he, in grudging acquiescence. “I hope, indeed, I may be.”
CHAPTER XVI. GONZAGA UNMASKS
The four great outer walls of Roccaleone stood ranged into a mighty square, of which the castle proper occupied but half. The other half, running from north to south, was a stretch of garden, broken into three terraces. The highest of these was no more than a narrow alley under the southern wall, roofed from end to end by a trellis of vines on beams blackened with age, supported by uprights of granite, square and roughly hewn.
A steep flight of granite steps, weedy in the interstices of the old stone, and terminating in a pair of couchant lions at the base, led down to the middle terrace, which was called the upper garden. This was split in twain by a very gallery of gigantic box trees running down towards the lower terrace, and bearing eloquent witness to the age of that old garden. Into this gallery no sun ever penetrated by more than a furtive ray, and on the hottest day in summer a grateful cool dwelt in its green gloom. Rose gardens spread on either side of it, but neglect of late had left them rank with weeds.
The third and lowest of these terraces, which was longer and broader than either of those above, was no more than a smooth stretch of lawn, bordered by acacias and plane trees, from the extreme corner of which sprang a winding, iron-railed staircase of stone, leading to an eerie which corresponded diagonally with the Lion's Tower, where the Count of Aquila was lodged.
On this green lawn Valentina's ladies and a page beguiled the eventide in a game of bowls, their clumsiness at the unwonted pastime provoking the good-humoured banter of Peppe, who looked on, and their own still better-humoured laughter.
Fortemani, too, was there, brazening out the morning's affair, which it almost seemed he must have forgotten, so self-possessed and mightily at his ease was he. He was of the kind with whom shame strikes never very deeply, and he ruffled it gaily there, among the women, rolling his fierce eyes to ogle them seductively, tossing his gaudy new cloak with a high-born disdain—gloriously conscious that it would not rend in the tossing, like the cloaks to which grim Circumstance had lately accustomed him—and strutting it like any cock upon a dunghill.