“What may be the purpose of your question?”
he growled.
“To serve your master, whoever he may be,”
I answered him serenely, “although it is a service
I do not press upon him. I, too, am journeying
to Cagli, and like yourselves, I am in haste and go
the shorter way across the hills, with which I am
well acquainted. If it so please you to follow
me your need of a guide may thus be satisfied.”
It was the tone to take if I would be respected.
Had I proposed that we should journey in company
I should not have earned me the half of the deference
which was accorded to my haughtily granted leave that
they might follow me if they so chose.
With marked submission did he give me thanks in his
master’s name.
I mounted and set out, and at my heels came now the
litter and its escort. Thus did we quit the plain
and breast the slopes, where the snow grew deeper
and firmer underfoot as we advanced. And as I
went, still plaguing my mind to devise a means by
which I might penetrate to the Court of Pesaro, little
did I dream that the matter was being solved for me—the
solution having begun with my offer to guide that company
across the hills.
MADONNA PAOLA
We gained the heights in the forenoon, and there we
dismounted and paused awhile to breathe our horses
ere we took the path that was to lead us down to Cagli.
The air was sharp and cold, for all that overhead
was spread a cloudless, cobalt dome of sky, and the
sun poured down its light upon the wide expanse of
snow-clad earth, of a whiteness so dazzling as to be
hurtful to the sight.
Hitherto I had ridden stolidly ahead, as unheeding
of that following company as if I had been unconscious
of its existence. But now that we paused, their
fat, white-faced leader, whose name was Giacopo, approached
me and sought to draw me into conversation. I
yielded readily enough, for I scented a mystery about
that closely-curtained litter, and mysteries are ever
provoking to such a mind as mine. For all that
it might profit me naught to learn who rode there,
and why with all this haste, yet these were matters,
I confess, on which my curiosity was aroused.
“Are you journeying beyond Cagli?” I asked
him presently, in an idle tone.
He cocked his head, and eyed me aslant, the suspicion
in his eyes confirming the existence of the mystery
I scented.
“Yes,” he answered, after a pause.
“We hope to reach Urbino before night.
And you? Are you journeying far?”
“That far, at least,” I answered him,
emulating the caution he had shown.
And then, ere more might pass between us, the leather
curtains of the litter were sharply drawn aside.
At the sound I turned my head, and so far was the
vision different from that which—for no
reason that I can give—I had expected,
that I was stricken with surprise and wonder.
A lady—a very child, indeed—had
leapt nimbly to the ground ere any of those grooms
could offer her assistance.
