“To show you that the service you allude to is now paid,” she riposted sternly. “By reproaching me you have taken payment, and by insulting me you have stamped out my gratitude.”
“A most convenient logic yours,” he mocked. “I am cast aside like an outworn garment, and the garment is accounted paid for because through much hard usage it has come to look a little threadbare.”
And now it entered her mind that perhaps there was some justice in what he said. Perhaps she had used him a little hardly.
“Do you think, Gonzaga,” she said, and her tone was now a shade more gentle, “that because you have served me you may affront me, and that knight who has served me, also, and——”
“In what can such service as his compare with mine? What has he done that I have not done more?”
“Why, when the men rebelled here——”
“Bah! Cite me not that. Body of God! it is his trade to lead such swine. He is one of themselves. But for the rest, what has such a man as this to lose by his share in your rebellion, compared with such a loss as mine must be?”
“Why, if things go ill, I take it he may lose his life,” she answered, in a low voice. “Can you lose more?”
He made a gesture of impatience.
“If things go ill—yes. It may cost him dearly. But if they go well, and this siege is raised, he has nothing more to fear. Mine is a parlous case. However ends this siege, for me there will be no escape from the vengeance of Gian Maria and Guidobaldo. They know my share in it. They know that your action was helped by me, and that without me you could never have equipped yourself for such resistance. Whatever may betide you and this Ser Franceseo, for me there will be no escape.”