She drew a deep breath, then set him the obvious question:
“Did you not consider it—did you not weigh these chances—before you embarked upon this business, before you, yourself, urged me to this step?”
“Aye, did I,” he answered sullenly.
“Then, why these complaints now?”
He was singularly, madly frank with her in his reply. He told her that he had done it because he loved her, because she had given him signs that his love was not in vain.
“I gave you signs?” she interrupted him. “Mother in Heaven! Recite these signs that I may know them.”
“Were you not ever kind to me?” he demanded. “Did you not ever manifest a liking for my company? Were you not ever pleased that I should sing to you the songs that in your honour I had made? Was it not to me you turned in the hour of your need?”
“See now how poor a thing you are, Gonzaga?” she answered witheringly. “A woman may not smile on you, may not give you a kind word, may not suffer you to sing to her, but you must conclude she is enamoured of you. And if I turned to you in my hour of need, as you remind me, needs that be a sign of my infatuation? Does every cavalier so think when a helpless woman turns to him in her distress? But even so,” she continued, “how should all that diminish the peril you now talk of? Even were your suit with me to prosper, would that make you any the less Romeo Gonzaga, the butt of the anger of my uncle and Gian Maria? Rather do I think that it should make you more.”
But he disillusioned her. He did not scruple, in his angry mood, to lay before her his reasonings that as her husband he would be screened.
She laughed aloud at that.