She was so young, so frail and slight, that none but a craven could have found it in his heart to have deserted her just then.
"If it please you Madonna," I answered smoothly, "I will make bold to travel on with you." It may be that my even accents stung her; perhaps she read in them some measure of reproof of the ingratitude that lay in her altered bearing towards me.

Her eyes met mine across the table, and seemed to harden as she looked.

Her answer came in a vastly altered tone.
"Why, if you are bent that way, I shall be glad to have you avail yourself of my escort, Boccadoro." I had suffered the scorn now of her speech, now of her silence, for some hours, but never was I so near to turning on her as at that moment; never so near to consigning her to the fate to which her headstrong folly was compelling her.

That she should take that tone with me! The violence of the sudden choler I suppressed turned me pale under her steady glance.

So that, seeing it, her own cheeks flamed crimson, and her eyes fell, as if in token that she realised the meanness of her bearing.