"Do you account my niece a peasant girl?" he asked. "Would you have her
smirk and squirm at every piece of flattery you utter? So that she weds
your Highness what shall the rest signify?"

"I would she loved me a little," complained Gian Maria foolishly.

Guidobaldo looked him over with an eye that smiled inscrutably, and it
may have crossed his mind that this coarse, white-faced Duke was too
ambitious.

"I doubt not that she will," he answered, in tones as inscrutable as his
glance. "So that you woo with grace and ardour, what woman could
withstand your Highness? Be not put off by such modesty as becomes a
maid."

Those words of Guidobaldo's breathed new courage into him. Nor ever
after could he think that her coldness was other than a cloak, a sort of
maidenly garment behind which modesty bade her conceal the inclinations
of her heart. Reasoning thus, and having in support of it his wondrous
fatuity, it so befell that the more she shunned and avoided him, the more
did he gather conviction of the intensity of her affection; the more
loathing she betrayed, the more proof did it afford him of the consuming
quality of her passion. In the end, he went even so far as to applaud
and esteem in her this very maidenly conduct.

There were hunting-parties, hawking-parties, water-parties, banquets,
comedies, balls, and revels of every description, and for a week all went
well at Urbino. Then, as suddenly as if a cannon had been fired upon the
Palace, the festivities were interrupted. The news that an envoy of
Caesar Borgia's was at Babbiano with a message from his master came like