"Why! It is Ser Agostino, Lord of Nothing," he sneered, and down the
gallery rang the laugh of my cousin Cosimo, and there came, too, a ripple
of other voices.
Whether to save me from friction with those steely gentlemen who aimed at
grinding me to powder, whether from other motives, Bianca set her finger-
tips upon the Duke's white sleeve and moved away with him.
I leaned against the balustrade all numb, watching them depart. I saw
Cosimo come upon her other side and lean over her as he moved, so slim and
graceful, beside her own slight, graceful figure. Then I sank to the
cushions of the seat she had vacated, and stayed there with my misery until
the night had closed about the place, and the white marble pillars looked
ghostly and unreal.
CHAPTER V
THE WARNING
I prayed that evening more fervently than I had prayed since quitting Monte
Orsaro. It was as if all the influences of my youth, which lately had been
shaken off in the stir of intrigue and of rides that had seemed the prelude
to battle, were closing round me again.
Even as a woman had lured me once from the ways to which I seemed
predestined, only to drive me back once more the more frenziedly, so now it
almost seemed as if again a woman should have lured me to the world but to
drive me from it again and more resolutely than ever.
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