“A truce with thy jesting, Guiseppo Leoni,” Jacopa Amedi angrily observed; “thou dost proceed beyond the limits of courtesy. If the noble Buondlemonte chooses to submit to thy rough raillery, I do not. The honor of my house is concerned, and that shall not be tampered with by light lips.”
“Enough, Amedi,” Buondlemonte said, as he interrupted a sharp retort from Leoni, “Guiseppo meant no harm, and I have grown too wise, in my travels, to be angered by a friendly jest.”
“Methinks, though,” another of the group, who had hitherto remained silent, observed, “that Buondlemonte might vindicate my fair cousin from the insinuation of accepting an unwilling husband. The court of the emperor is a poor school for chivalry, if it does not teach the lesson that a fair lady’s name should be preserved, like the polished surface of a mirror, unsullied even by a breath.”
What reply Buondlemonte might have made to the captious cousin of his betrothed bride is impossible to say, for at that moment a young page, in gay attire, came up to the party, and, cap in hand, inquired if one of them was not Buondlemonte.
“There stands the object of thy search, thou elfin emissary from the bower of beauty!” Guiseppo smilingly remarked, as he pointed to Buondlemonte; “deliver the challenge thou art charged with, and he will meet thy mistress, though she be Medusa or Circe.”
The child carefully undid the folds of his scarf, and taking from thence a small note, presented it with a graceful obeisance to Buondlemonte.
“Your answer, noble sir,” he said. “I am directed to bear it.”
Buondlemonte took the billet, and, after excusing himself to his companions, stepped aside and cut the silken thread that bound it.
The note must have contained something more than ordinary, for as the young man glanced his eyes over it, the red blood mounted to his cheeks and his forehead.
“Whom dost thou serve, my pretty youth?” Jacopa Amedi asked, as Buondlemonte perused and reperused the paper.