Fool of a Duke that he was! Blind, crass and most fatuous of wooers!
Had he been bred in courts and his ears attuned to words that meant
nothing, that were but the empty echoes of what should have been meant;
was he so new to courtesies in which the heart had no share, that those
words of Valentina's must bring him down upon his knees beside her, to
take her dainty fingers in his fat hands, and to become transformed into
a boorish lover of the most outrageous type?

"Shall you so?" he lisped, his glance growing mighty amorous. "Shall you
indeed grieve?"

She rose abruptly to her feet.

"I beg that your Highness will rise," she enjoined him coldly, a coldness
which changed swiftly to alarm as her endeavours to release her hand
proved vain. For despite her struggles he held on stoutly. This was
mere coyness, he assured himself, mere maidenly artifice which he must
bear with until he had overcome it for all time.

"My lord, I implore you!" she continued. "Bethink you of where you are--
of who you are."

"Here will I stay until the crack of doom," he answered, with an odd
mixture of humour, ardour and ferocity, "unless you consent to listen to
me."

"I am ready to listen, my lord," she answered, without veiling a
repugnance that he lacked the wit to see. "But it is not necessary that
you should hold my hand, nor fitting that you should kneel."