Page:Maurice Hewlett--Little novels of Italy.djvu/297

Rh able past; it was falling now gently to a comely decay; but it answered every purpose. All promised well. So much Captain Mosca was given to understand; yet it was hinted that his promises were not complete. "My life and soul," cried he on his knees in the garden, "the little affair is a matter of three minutes." It proved to be a matter of more than three months and was then accomplished in another way and with other results than had been looked for. Thus it was.

When Angioletto had been assured of the nesting of his mate, he dressed himself point-device and went to Court to deliver his credentials. He found the lady upon whom so much depended, at the Schifanoia. Madama Lionella d'Este, wife of the Count Guarino Guarini, was a fresh-coloured, lusty young woman of three and twenty, not at all in love with her husband, but very much in love with love. The Captain of Lances had said truly when he shrugged her off as no beauty. Large-limbed she was, the shape of a boy, with a long mouth and small eyes, full-lipped, big in foot and hand. Yet she was a very merry soul, frank if not free in her speech and gesture, and though liable to bursts of angry temper, for the most part as innocent of malice as a tiger cub. If you remember her an Este, you will forgive her much, excuse her everything, and rather like her.

Angioletto, who found her sitting on the grass among her ladies, advanced with great ceremony and many bows. Madama did not get up; no one did; so Angioletto had to step gingerly into