“This worthy doctor tells me that he suspects she has been poisoned, Lazzaro.”
“Poisoned?” I echoed. “Body of God! but by whom? We all loved her. There was not in Pesaro a man worthy of the name but would have laid down his life in her service. Who was there, then, to poison that dear saint?”
It was then that the memory of Ramiro del’ Orca, and the look that in his eyes I had surprised whilst Madonna drank, flashed back into my mind.
“Where is the Governor of Cesena?” I cried suddenly. Filippo looked at me with quick surprise.
“He departed betimes this morning for his castle. Why do you ask?”
I told him why I asked; I told him what I knew of Ramiro’s attentions to Madonna, of the rejection they had suffered, and of the vengeance he had seemed to threaten. Filippo heard me patiently, but when I had done he shook his head.
“Why, all being as you say, should he work so wanton a destruction?” he asked stupidly, as if jealousy were not cause enough to drive an evil man to destroy that which he may not possess. “Nay, nay, your wits are disordered. You remember that he looked at Madonna whilst she drank, and you construe that into a proof that he had poisoned the cup she drank from. But then it is probable that we all looked at her in that same moment.”
“But not with such eyes as his,” I insisted.
“Could he have administered the poison with his own hands?” asked the doctor gravely.
“No,” said I, “that were a difficult matter. But he might have bribed a servant to drop a powder in her wine.”