Page:Maurice Hewlett--Little novels of Italy.djvu/201

Rh not only so, but it is probable that the Lord Gregorio, seeing such an envoy to his hand, might put a bolt into it, and itself into the pot, without interrogatories delivered or answers made. So messenger and message would alike be boiled. Another way occurs to me, which arises out of this consideration. We stand, each bather of us, in a lake of air. A lake? Rather, an illimitable ocean of it spread over land and sea, in which the very mountain-tops do blink. Should not, then, the pulsing of our thought, as it rings outward from us, be discernible in the ripples about the Lord Gregorio's ears? Obviously it should. But the reading of such ripples would be a nice matter; and again we lack means, and again the time, to instruct his lordship. Once more—"

"Ah, you dream your subtleties, and my letter gets cold," said Bianca Maria, pouting. "You are now just as you sit watchfully when you should be painting my picture."

"It is then that I am painting my hardest, Princess Saint Anne," he returned. "But leave with me your letter. It shall go in a man's bosom to-morrow morning."

High affairs of State are not settled in a week, nor dukes so apt at billing as a pair of girls. Duke Ludovic would not declare himself to every adventurer; Duke Amilcare was too patently adventurous to disclose all his hand. Then came Grifone, with a game of his own. Blind each of one eye, they set to dealing their cards for beggar-my-neighbour.

Now Ludovic feared one man in all Italy, and so did Amilcare. That was the one man in all