"
He paused at last, and stood trembling before her, his eyes aflame, his
high cheek-bones faintly tinted. And she measured him very calmly and
coldly with her sombre eyes.
"Are you a priest?" she asked with steady scorn. "Are you indeed a
priest?" And then her invective was loosened, and her voice shrilled and
mounted as her anger swayed her. "What a snake have I harboured here!" she
cried. "Blasphemer! You show me clearly whence came the impiety and
ungodliness of Giovanni d'Anguissola. It had the same source as your own.
It was suckled at your mother's breast."
A sob shook him. "My mother is dead, Madonna!" he rebuked her.
"She is more blessed, then, than I; since she has not lived to see what a
power for sin she has brought forth. Go, pitiful friar. Go, both of you.
You are very choicely mated. Begone from Mondolfo, and never let me see
either of you more."
She staggered to her great chair and sank into it, whilst we stood there,
mute, regarding her. For myself, it was with difficulty that I repressed
the burning things that rose to my lips. Had I given free rein to my
tongue, I had made of it a whip of scorpions. And my anger sprang not from
the things she said to me, but from what she said to that saintly man who
held out a hand to help me out of the morass of sin in which I was being
sunk.
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