“You are greatly daring,” said I.
“To take in vain the name of her white innocence?” she answered, smiling superciliously. And then she grew more serious. “Look, Agostino, we were friends once. I would be your friend now.”
“It is a friendship, Madonna, best not given expression.”
“Ha! We are very scrupulous—are we not?—since we have abandoned the ways of holiness, and returned to this world of wickedness, and raised our eyes to the pale purity of the daughter of Cavalcanti!” She spoke sneeringly.
“What is that to you?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she answered frankly. “But that another may have raised his eyes to her is something. I am honest with you. If this child is aught to you, and you would not lose her, you would do well to guard her more closely than you are wont. A word in season. That is all my message.”
“Stay!” I begged her now, for already she was gliding away through the shadows of the gallery.
She laughed over her shoulder at me—the very incarnation of effrontery and insolence.
“Have I moved you into sensibility?” quoth she. “Will you condescend to questions with one whom you despise?—as, indeed,” she added with a stinging scorn, “you have every right to do.”
“Tell me more precisely what you mean,” I begged her, for her words had moved me fearfully.