“Alas!  Madonna,” I sighed, “but the times are sorely changed and the situations with them.  What is there now that I can do?”

“What you did then.  Take me beyond their reach.”

“Ah!  But whither?”

“Whither but to the Lord Giovanni?  Is it not to him that my troth is plighted?”

I shook my head in sorrow, a thrust of jealousy cutting me the while.

“That may not be,” said I.  “It were not seemly, unless the Lord Giovanni were here himself to take you hence.”

“Then I will write to the Lord Giovanni,” she cried.  “I will write, and you shall bear my letter.”

“What think you will the Lord Giovanni do?” I burst out, with a scorn that must have puzzled her.  “Think you his safety does not give him care enough in the hiding-place to which he has crept, that he should draw upon himself the vengeance of the Borgias?”

She stared at me in ineffable surprise.  “But the Lord Giovanni is brave and valiant,” she cried, and down in my heart I laughed in bitter mockery.

“Do you love the Lord Giovanni, Madonna?” I asked bluntly.

My question seemed to awaken fresh astonishment.  It may well be that it awakened, too, reflection.  She was silent for a little space.  Then—­

“I honour and respect him for a noble, chivalrous and gifted gentleman,” she answered me, and her answer made me singularly content, spreading a balm upon the wounds my soul had taken.  But to her fresh intercessions that I should carry a letter to him, I shook my head again.  My mood was stubborn.

“Believe me, Madonna, it were not only unwise, but futile.”

She protested.

“I swear it would be,” I insisted, with a convincing force that left her staring at me and wondering whence I derived so much assurance.  “We must wait.  From now till Christmas we have more than two months.  In two months much may befall.  As a last resource we may consider communication with the Lord Giovanni.  But it is a forlorn hope, Madonna, and so we will leave it until all else has failed us.”

She brightened at my promise that at least if other measures proved unavailing, we should adopt that course, and her brightening flattered me, for it bore witness to the supreme confidence she had in me.

“Lazzaro,” said she, “I know you will not fail me.  I trust you more than any living mam; more, I think, than even the Lord Giovanni, whom, if God pleases, I shall some day wed.”

“Thanks, Madonna mia,” I answered, gratefully indeed.  “It is a trust that I shall ever strive to justify.  Meanwhile have faith and hope, and wait.”

Once before, when, to escape the schemes of her brother who would have wed her to the Lord Giovanni, she had appealed to me, the counsel I had given her had been much the same as that which I gave her now.  At the irony of it I could have laughed had any other been in question but Madonna Paola—­ this tender White Flower of the Quince that was like to be rudely wilted by the ruthless hands of scheming men.