And who would have suspected so very fierce a wolf under so
sheepish an outside? Body of God! You fooled us all, you and that white-
faced trull."
He said it through his teeth with such a concentration of rage in his tones
that it was easy to guess where the sore rankled.
I looked at him gravely. "Does it become you, sir, do you think, to gird
at one who is your prisoner?"
"And did you not gird at me when it was your turn?" he flashed back
fiercely. "Did not you and she laugh together over that poor, fond fool
Cosimo whose money she took so very freely, and yet who seems to have been
the only one excluded from her favours?"
"You lie, you dog!" I blazed at him, so fiercely that the men turned in
their saddles. He paled, and half raised the gauntleted hand in which he
carried his whip. But he controlled himself, and barked an order to his
followers:
"Ride on, there!"
When they had drawn off a little, and we were alone again, "I do not lie,
sir," he said. "It is a practice which I leave to shavelings of all
degrees."
"If you say that she took aught from you, then you lie," I repeated.
He considered me steadily. "Fool!" he said at last. "Whence else came her
jewels and fine clothes? From Fifanti, do you think--that impecunious
pedant? Or perhaps you imagine that it was from Gambara? In time that
grasping prelate might have made the Duke pay.
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