.."
"Tcha! Tcha!" he interrupted, tapping her shoulder sharply. "I had no
thought for letters. There is my Lord Gambara, and there is Messer Cosimo
d'Anguissola, and there is Messer Caro. There is even Pordenone, the
painter." His lips writhed over their names. "You have friends enough, I
think. Leave, then, Ser Agostino here. Do not dispute him with God to
whom he has been vowed."
She rose in a fine anger, and stood quivering there, magnificently tall,
and Juno, I imagined, must have looked to the poets as she looked then to
me.
"This is too much!" she cried.
"It is, madam," he snapped. "I agree with you." She considered him with
eyes that held a loathing and contempt unutterable. Then she looked at me,
and shrugged her shoulders as who would say: "You see how I am used!"
Lastly she turned, and took her way across the lawn towards the house.
There was a little silence between us after she had gone. I was on fire
with indignation, and yet I could think of no words in which I might
express it, realizing how utterly I lacked the right to be angry with a
husband for the manner in which he chose to treat his wife.
At last, pondering me very gravely, he spoke.
"It were best you read no more with Madonna Giuliana," he said slowly.
"Her tastes are not the tastes that become a man who is about to enter holy
orders.
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