I saw at once that did I make an
ensample of this scurrilous scandalmonger I should thereby render her the
talk of that vile town. So I went on, but very white and stiff, and
breathing somewhat hard; for pent-up passion is an evil thing to house.
Thus came we out of the town and to the shady banks of the gleaming Po.
And then, at last, when we were quite alone, and within two hundred yards
of Fifanti's house, I broke at last the silence.
I had been thinking very busily, and the peasant's words had illumined for
me a score of little obscure matters, had explained to me the queer
behaviour and the odd speeches of Fifanti himself since that evening in the
garden when the Cardinal-legate had announced to him his appointment as
ducal secretary. I checked now in my stride, and turned to face her.
"Was it true?" I asked, rendered brutally direct by a queer pain I felt as
a result of my thinking.
She looked up into my face so sadly and wistfully that my suspicions fell
from me upon the instant, and I reddened from shame at having harboured
them.
"Agostino!" she cried, such a poor little cry of pain that I set my teeth
hard and bowed my head in self-contempt.
Then I looked at her again.
"Yet the foul suspicion of that lout is shared by your husband himself,"
said I.
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