“Dead?” I remember whispering.  “What is it you say?” And I leaned forward towards him, peering into his face.  “What is it you say?”

“Well may you doubt your ears,” he groaned.  “But, Vergine Santissima! it is the truth.  Madonna Paola, that sweet angel of God, lies cold and stiff.  They found her so this morning.”

“God of Heaven!” I cried out, and leaving him abruptly I dashed down the steps.

Scarce knowing what I did, acting upon an impulsive instinct that was as irresistible as it was unreasoning, I made for the apartments of Madonna Paola.  In the antechamber I found a crowd assembled, and on every face was pallid consternation written.  Of my own countenance I had a glimpse in a mirror as I passed; it was ashen, and my hollow eyes were wild as a madman’s.

Someone caught me by the arm.  I turned.  It was the Lord Filippo, pale as the rest, his affectations all fallen from him, and the man himself revealed by the hand of an overwhelming sorrow.  With him was a grave, white-bearded gentleman, whose sober robe proclaimed the physician.

“This is a black and monstrous affair, my friend,” he murmured.

“Is it true, is it really true, my lord?” I cried in such a voice that all eyes were turned upon me.

“Your grief is a welcome homage to my own,” he said.  “Alas, Dio Santo! it is most hideously true.  She lies there cold and white as marble, I have just seen her.  Come hither, Lazzaro.”  He drew me aside, away from the crowd and out of that antechamber, into a closet that had been Madonna’s oratory.  With us came the physician.

“This worthy doctor tells me that he suspects she has been poisoned, Lazzaro.”

“Poisoned?” I echoed.  “Body of God! but by whom?  We all loved her.  There was not in Pesaro a man worthy of the name but would have laid down his life in her service.  Who was there, then, to poison that dear saint?”

It was then that the memory of Ramiro del’ Orca, and the look that in his eyes I had surprised whilst Madonna drank, flashed back into my mind.

“Where is the Governor of Cesena?” I cried suddenly.  Filippo looked at me with quick surprise.

“He departed betimes this morning for his castle.  Why do you ask?”

I told him why I asked; I told him what I knew of Ramiro’s attentions to Madonna, of the rejection they had suffered, and of the vengeance he had seemed to threaten.  Filippo heard me patiently, but when I had done he shook his head.

“Why, all being as you say, should he work so wanton a destruction?” he asked stupidly, as if jealousy were not cause enough to drive an evil man to destroy that which he may not possess.  “Nay, nay, your wits are disordered.  You remember that he looked at Madonna whilst she drank, and you construe that into a proof that he had poisoned the cup she drank from.  But then it is probable that we all looked at her in that same moment.”