But Valentina's voice now bade him stay with them, and so his opportunity was lost.
He moved about the room a very dispirited, moody fool with no quip for anyone, for his thoughts were all on Gonzaga and the treason that he was sure he was hatching.

Yet faithful to Francesco, who sat all unconcerned, and not wishing to alarm Valentina, he choked back the warning that rose to his lips, seeking to convince himself that his fears sprang perhaps from an excess of suspicion.

Had he known how well-founded indeed they were he might have practised less self-restraint.
For whilst he moved sullenly about the room, assisting Fra Domenico with the dishes and platters, Gonzaga paced the ramparts beside Cappoccio, who was on sentry duty on the north wall.
His business called for no great diplomacy, nor did Gonzaga employ much.
He bluntly told Cappoccio that he and his comrades had allowed Messer Francesco's glib tongue to befool them that morning, and that the assurances Francesco had given them were not worthy of an intelligent man's consideration.
"I tell you, Cappoccio," he ended, "that to remain here and protract this hopeless resistance will cost you your life at the unsavoury hands of the hangman.

You see I am frank with you." Now for all that what Gonzaga told him might sort excellently well with the ideas he had himself entertained, Cappoccio was of a suspicious nature, and his suspicions whispered to him now that Gonzaga was actuated by some purpose he could not gauge.
He stood still, and leaning with both hands upon his partisan, he sought to make out the courtier's features in the dim light of the rising moon.
"Do you mean," he asked, and in his voice sounded the surprise with which Gonzaga's odd speech had filled him, "that we are foolish to have listened to Messer Francesco, and that we should be better advised to march out of Roccaleone ?" "Yes; that is what I mean." "But why," he insisted, his surprise increasing, "do you urge such a course upon us ?" "Because, Cappoccio," was the plausible reply, "like yourselves, I was lured into this business by insidious misrepresentations.

The assurances that I gave Fortemani, and with which he enrolled you into his service, were those that had been given to me.