"Carlo, you have done worse than that. When I saw you first here, what
crimes did you not accuse me of? what names did you not scatter on my
head? and what things did I not, confess to? I bore the unkindness, for
you were beaten, and you wanted a victim. And, my dear friend,
considering that I am after all a woman, my forbearance has subsequently
been still greater."

"How?" he asked. Her half-pathetic candour melted him.

"You must, have a lively memory for the uses of forgetfulness, Carlo,
When you had scourged me well, you thought it proper to raise me up and
give me comfort. I was wicked for serving the king, and therefore the
country, as a spy; but I was to persevere, and cancel my iniquities by
betraying those whom I served to you. That was your instructive precept.
Have I done it or not? Answer, too have I done it for any payment beyond
your approbation? I persuaded you to hope for Lombardy, and without any
vaunting of my own patriotism. You have seen and spoken to the men I
directed you to visit. If their heads master yours, I shall be
reprobated for it, I know surely; but I am confident as yet that you can
match them. In another month I expect to see the king over the Ticino
once more, and Carlo in Brescia with his comrades. You try to penetrate
my eyes. That's foolish; I can make them glass. Read me by what I say
and what I do. I do not entreat you to trust me; I merely beg that you
will trust your own judgement of me by what I have helped you to do
hitherto. You and I, my dear boy, have had some trifling together. Admit
that another woman would have refused to surrender you as I did when your
unruly Vittoria was at last induced to come to you from Milan. Or,
another woman would have had her revenge on discovering that she had been
a puppet of soft eyes and a lover's quarrel with his mistress. Instead