"Tell us now! I'm the sort that can't wait," said she.
The benignity of Mr. Pelly's face as he replied to her was a sight to be seen.
"The Herr Professor thinks it is quite clear that this young man, on his arrival at the Palace of the great noble whose wife he was to paint, fell in love with some girl of her retinue, possibly having recognised some friend of early childhood; and that the Duchess fell in love with him. Naturally—because we must bear in mind this was in the Middle Ages, or nearly—jealousy would prompt assassination of one or both of the young lovers...."
"But who was the Old Devil? That's what I want to know."
"Evidently the wicked Duchess herself."
"What did she want to have her portrait painted for if she was old?"
"The Herr Professor conjectures that the reason our young painter remained stupefied when he first saw the Duchess was that she turned out not to be young at all, but old and repulsive." Madeline looked doubtful. "Then the idea was that the Duchess personally conducted the examination of the girl—caught the two young people spooneying, and had her murdered on the spot. And that the young man thereon went straight for her throat. After which she naturally felt that it would be difficult to get on a tender footing with him, as she had wished to do, and had him consigned to a dungeon for life."
Madeline disagreed. "No," said she, "I don't think the Professor's at all a good theory. Mine's better. Go on reading. I'll tell you mine presently."
Mr. Pelly refound his place and went on reading.
"'... Had my grip on the Old Devil's throat. And also I had felt his approval in his hands as he helped to bear me away from the Stanza delle Quattro Corone, though my senses failed too fast for me to understand what he said to his comrade. Yet I thought, too, it sounded like "Un bel giovane per Bacco!" So when at last I was unbound, and stood in the forecourt of a great castle in the middle of a group of men, some of whom had torches—for it was then well on into the night—and dogs that I had heard barking through the last short half-hour of our approach up the steep and stony ascent to the great gates that had now clanged to, as I judged then, for my last passage through them either way—I, though stiff and in pain, and in a kind of dumb stupor as I stood there, could still resolve a little in my mind what might even now be done to help me in my plight.