“If I do not,” I said, “you may blot the name of Francis Strelley from the Book of Life and Judgment.  God bless you, Belviso, dear friend.  Your words convince me.  Go in peace.  Take money, take what you choose—­my love, my gratitude—–­”

“I choose nothing but your confidence, and a kiss of your noble hand,” said Belviso.

“You shall grasp, not kiss, my hand,” I told him.  “You are a man, or will be one, as I am.  Let us love, trust, meet, part, as men.”

I held out my hand, he took it, pressed it, seemed unable to let it go.  Suddenly he dropped down and kissed my knee—­but with ardour, with reverence, indescribable devotion; then sprang to his feet, and was gone.

I made all preparations for my journey to Florence.

CHAPTER XLI

I RETURN TO FLORENCE AND THE WORLD OF FASHION

Upon my arrival in the capital, my first care, after securing a lodging on the Lung’ Arno, was to pay a visit to the Ghetto, where I had spent those happy three days with my newly wedded wife—­if wife indeed she had been.  I found the church, but not the priest; I found the old Jewess, Miriam, in whose house we had lodged.  She made short work of my doubts.  “You are no more married to your Virginia than you are to me,” she curtly said.  “You are as little married as any young man of my acquaintance.  Married, indeed!  Why, that church hadn’t had a Mass said in it to my knowledge for fifty years, except a black one now and again to oblige the jaded vicious; and as for your priest, ’tis true he was a priest once, but he had been degraded for a bad affair of robbery with violence and inhibited from his business—­and, now I come to think on it, he was hanged outside the Bargello no earlier than last week.”

I was aghast at this news, which, as it was delivered, I could hardly doubt.  Virginia then had deceived me.  I had trusted her in all things and she had played me false.  Designing to do her honour, I had done her the greatest dishonour—­but through her means.  Blind fool that I was!  Playing the husband, complacently accepting her play of the wife as serious.  O Heaven, and she had let me ruin her, and now was gone!  I own that I was angry at being made the victim of a trick, indignant at having been forced into a thing which I should never have dreamed of doing.  But when I turned severely to Miriam and accused her of being a party to the fraud, she laughed in my face, and put the case before me in a way which made me sing a tune in the minor.  “Fiddlededee!” she retorted, her arms stuck out akimbo, “what in the world had I to do with your fooleries?  ’Twas the girl arranged it all—­and for reasons which do her more credit than you seem able to do her.  I think she’s a very good girl—­a thousand times too good for you.  If you find her again I shall be sorry for her—­and I’ll tell you this much, that I shan’t help you.”