“He received me with a grin, expressing surprise, which I knew he had not, and pleasure, which I fear he had.  I was as unconcerned as I knew how to be, and began unpacking the linen; but he came behind me at once, and, kneeling beside me on one knee, began to be unpleasantly attentive, praising my beauty extravagantly, talking, joking, whispering—­and worse—­doing all he could, in fact, to make me as bad as he was.  He owned that he had laid this ‘little stratagem of love,’ as he called it, and that the bill, far from being in arrear, had been paid, and twice paid.  There, then, was the price of my betrayal.  Then he spoke of you, Francis, asking whether I had discovered the cause of your recent distemperature.  ‘I have given him some news of his Aurelia of late,’ he said, ’which may have inclined him to neglect a far more charming nymph.’  I replied to that, that if he had put himself to the trouble of telling you lies of Donna Aurelia, there was no wonder that you were unhappy; for, says I, ’To have her name, which you held sacred, tripped off lips which you knew to be profane was a horrible thing.’  He laughed at me, and called me his incorrigible charmer, his dearest tease, delight and provocation.  He grew very attentive, and would have embraced me; whereupon, biding my time, I gave him such a slap in the left eye as he won’t soon recover from.  Then, while he was cursing me and calling for his servant, I made my escape.”

I praised her warmly, as she deserved.  She had done what became her with the only weapon she possessed.  “The rest,” I said, “is mine.  I shall know how to maintain your honour and my own.  This very night I shall send a friend to the cavaliere, and leave him the choice of weapons.”

She stopped our walk, and faced me with agitation.  “Dio mio, my lord, what are you saying?” I repeated my words, and she became dry, as she always did when she disapproved.

“Good, my lord,” she said; “and may your handmaid know the name of the friend whom you propose to send with your cartel to the Cavaliere Aquamorta?”

I said that I should ask Gioiachino, our fellow-lodger, to oblige me.

“Excellent,” said Virginia with irony, “excellent indeed!  Gioiachino, a cat’s-meat man, waits upon the Cavaliere Aquamorta on behalf of his friend Francesco, a journeyman carpenter!”

This made me more angry than I had any business to be, for she was perfectly right from the cavaliere’s view of the thing.  I said, “Virginia, my condition in this world has never been hidden from you.  Apart from my birthright, which is an advantage not of my own making, I hope I have never been to you other than an honourable man.  Gioiachino, who has been a good friend to you and me, certainly deserves no less credit.  If a gentleman, as I claim to be, is condescending enough to send a person perfectly honest to a vulgar, libidinous, lying bully and cheat, who happens to have robbed to better purpose than I have worked—­ then, I say, you should agree with me that I am paying more honour to a thief than he can hope to deserve.  I am sorry to have to speak so plainly to you, but it is not for you, any more than for me, to reproach Gioiachino with being an honest man.”