Part 49

"To be plain with you, my lamb," said the Mosca, "she has no such vasty love for me. I have not set foot within her door since a certain day you may remember."

The girl shivered. "If I remember it! Ah, Madonna delle Grazie, she had a devil that day!"

"She had seven, I'm sure of it," cried the Captain. "So I leave you to judge how much of your story she may worm out of me."

He so beamed upon her, kissed her hands with such a lofty stoop, that she felt ashamed of herself, and begged his pardon.

This brought the Captain to his knees. "By the God who made the Jews," he swore, "I leave not this raw flagstone till you have unsaid those words!"

In the end, after a prodigious fuss, he drifted away down the corridor and left her to go about her business.

But he drifted not very far. He felt himself full of affairs which were as meat and drink to his spirit starved by neglect. It was so great a thing to have a pretext for approaching Count Guarini. That young lord had a way like a keen-edged knife. You might weave a whole vestment about your errand, fold upon fold of ingenious surmise, argument pro, argument con; Guarino Guarini would dart eyes upon you--slash! he had rent your fabric and discovered you naked underneath, a liar ready for the whip. Nor, to do him justice, did he ever fail to apply it. Truth was, indeed, the only key to Guarino's chamber.

Truth, and timely truth, was what the Captain felt he had at last. With it he braved the supercilious doorkeeper; with it he forced the fellow to lift his intolerable eyelids.

"By the powers of darkness, my friend," he said, "it will be a bad day's work for you if you deny me this time." So he won his admission and faced his master.

"Now, Mosca, your lie," said the Count, with his cold-steel delivery. Mosca did not stumble.

"Master," he said, "I can do you service."

"Do it then," whipped in the Count.

"I can tell your Excellence why he succeeds no better with La Bellaroba."

"Ah!" The Count was suspicious, but interested.

"The little lady has a lover."

"Body of a dog!"

"Body of Angioletto, Excellence."

"Angioletto? That spaniel? How many more laps will he cradle in? Cut his tongue out, my good fellow, and then come to me again."

"Excellence, may I speak?"

"I suppose so. Speak."

The Captain waited no further invitation, but told the whole story from the beginning. Guarino thought upon it for a moment.

"He will come to-night?" he asked.

"Certain, Excellence."

"Then we have him. You have done well, Mosca--it was time, my friend, for you are an expensive hack to keep at grass. Now listen. Take Bellaroba away--command of the Contessa, of course. Take her to the little house in the Borgo. Make all fast, and return here in time for the steeple-jack. When you have him in the trap, run him through the body, raise the devil's uproar, and denounce him to the patrol. Do you understand me?"

"Perfectly, Excellence."

"Take my purse from the table and off with you then."

Captain Mosca bowed to the ground and backed out.

VIII