Clearly I had burned my boats, and I had done it almost unthinkingly, acting upon the good impulse to befriend this lady, and never reckoning the cost down to its total.

For all that the thing I had done, and what I might yet do, should offer me the means I needed to enter Pesaro without danger to my neck, I did not see that I was to derive great profit in the end--unless my profit lay in knowing that I had advanced the ruin of Giovanni Sforza by delivering my letter to Lucrezia.

That at any rate was enough incentive clearly to define for me the line that I should take through this tangle into which the ever-jesting Fates had thrust me.
I was still at my thoughts, still pondering this most perplexing situation, the hostess standing silent by the door, when suddenly Madonna Paola spoke.
"Sir," said she, in faltering accents, "I--I have not the right to ask you, and I stand already so deeply in your debt.

Not a doubt of it, but it will have inconvenienced you to have journeyed thus far to inform me of the flight of my grooms.

Yet if you could--" She paused, timid of proceeding, and her glance fell.
The hostess was all ears, struck by the respectful manner in which this very evidently noble lady addressed a Fool.