Then more sternly, added: "Get you to bed, Gonzaga.

Your wits play you false.

Peppino, call my ladies." In the moment that they were left alone he stepped close up to her, spurred to madness by the jealous pangs he had that day endured.

His face gleamed white in the candlelight, and in his eyes there was a lurking fierceness that gave her pause.
"Have your way, Madonna," he said, in a concentrated voice; "but to-morrow, whether we go hence, or whether we stay, he remains not with us." She drew herself up to the full of her slender, graceful height, her eyes on a level with Gonzaga's own.
"That," she answered, "is as shall be decreed by me or him." He breathed sharply, and his voice hardened beyond belief in one usually so gentle of tone and manner.
"Be warned, Madonna," he muttered, coming so close that with the slightest swaying she must touch him, "that if this nameless sbirro shall ever dare to stand 'twixt you and me, by God and His saints, I'll kill him! Be warned, I say." And the door re-opening at that moment, he fell back, bowed, and brushing past the entering ladies, gained the threshold.

Here someone tugged at the prodigious foliated sleeves that spread beside him on the air like the wings of a bird.