Pacing
her bower, interminably she asked herself one question. And at last,
when Lapo would have passed her on the stairs, she hurled into his
face:
"What did you do to Raffaele Muti?"
He started, so little did he expect to hear her voice. His battered
countenance turned redder, as he noted that for the sake of the
other she was like an overstretched bow, almost breaking. Then a
pang stabbed him treacherously. Fearing that she might discern his
misery, he turned back, leaving her limp against the wall.
He took to walking the runway of the ramparts, gnawing his fingers
and muttering to himself, shaking his tousled hair. With a sigh, as
if some thoughts were too heavy a burden for that iron frame, he sat
down on an archer's ledge, to stare toward the hut of the renegade
Arabian. Often at night he sat thus, hour after hour, a coarse
creature made romantic by a flood of moonlight. And as he bowed his
head the sentinel heard him fetch a groan such as one utters whose
life escapes through a sword-wound.
One-eyed Baldo also groaned at these goings-on, and swallowed many
angry speeches. But Foresto the horse-boy began to hum at his work.
This Foresto had attached himself to Lapo's force in the Ferrarese
campaign.
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