.

PLOT AND COUNTERPLOT.
Peppe's quick eyes had seen Gonzaga crumple and drop the paper, no less than he had observed the courtier's startled face, and his suspicions had been aroused.

He was by nature prying, and experience had taught him that the things men seek to conceal are usually the very things it imports most to have knowledge of.

So when Gonzaga had gone, in obedience to Valentina's summons, the jester peered carefully over the battlements.
At first he saw nothing, and he was concluding with disappointment that the thing Gonzaga had cast from him was lost in the torrential waters of the moat.

But presently, lodged on a jutting stone, above the foaming stream into which it would seem that a miracle had prevented it from falling, he espied a ball of crumpled paper.