“They are poor men,” said she.  “Would you have them robed in velvet?”

“My quarrel is with their looks, Madonna, not their garments,” I answered patiently.  She laughed lightly, carelessly; even, I thought, a trifle scornfully.

“You are very fanciful,” said she, then added—­“but if so be that you are afraid to trust yourself in their company, why then, sir, I need bring you no farther out of the road that you were following when first we met.”

Did the child think that some jealousy actuated me, and prompted me to inspire her with mistrust of my supplanters?  She angered me.  Yet now, more than ever was I resolved to journey with her.  Leave her at the mercy of those ruffians, whom in her ignorance she was mad enough to trust, I could not—­not even had she whipped me.  She was so young, so frail and slight, that none but a craven could have found it in his heart to have deserted her just then.

“If it please you Madonna,” I answered smoothly, “I will make bold to travel on with you.”

It may be that my even accents stung her; perhaps she read in them some measure of reproof of the ingratitude that lay in her altered bearing towards me.  Her eyes met mine across the table, and seemed to harden as she looked.  Her answer came in a vastly altered tone.

“Why, if you are bent that way, I shall be glad to have you avail yourself of my escort, Boccadoro.”

I had suffered the scorn now of her speech, now of her silence, for some hours, but never was I so near to turning on her as at that moment; never so near to consigning her to the fate to which her headstrong folly was compelling her.  That she should take that tone with me!

The violence of the sudden choler I suppressed turned me pale under her steady glance.  So that, seeing it, her own cheeks flamed crimson, and her eyes fell, as if in token that she realised the meanness of her bearing.  To some natures there can be nothing more odious than such a realisation, and of those, I think, was she; for she stamped her foot in a sudden pet, and curtly asked the host why there was such delay with the horses.

“They are at the door, Madonna,” he protested, bowing as he spoke.  “And your escort is already waiting in the saddle.”

She turned and strode abruptly towards the threshold.  Over her shoulder she called to me: 

“If you come with us, Boccadoro, you had best be brisk.”

“I follow, Madonna,” said I, with a grim relish, “so soon as I have paid the reckoning.”

She halted and half turned, and I thought I saw a slight droop at the corners of her mouth.

“You are keeping count of what I owe you?” she muttered.

“Aye, Madonna,” I answered, more grimly still, “I am keeping count.”  And I thought that my wits were vastly at fault if that account were not to be greatly swelled ere Pesaro was reached.  Haply, indeed, my own life might go to swell it.  I almost took a relish in that thought.  Perhaps then, when I was stiff and cold—­done to death in her service—­this handsome, ungrateful child would come to see how much discomfort I had suffered for her sake.