She abhorred him, yet she had spared him the humiliation of hearing it from her lips, intending to fight for her liberty with her uncle.

But now, since he handled her as though she had been a serving-wench; since he appeared to know nothing of the deference due to her, nothing of the delicacies of people well-born and well-bred, she would endure his odious love-making no further.

Since he elected to pursue his wooing like a clown, the high-spirited daughter of Urbino promised herself that in like fashion would she deal with him.
Swinging herself free from his grasp a second time, she caught him a stinging buffet on the ducal cheek which--so greatly did it take him by surprise--all but sent him sprawling.
"Madonna!" he panted.

"This indignity to me!" "And what indignities have not I suffered at your hands ?" she retorted, with a fierceness of glance before which he recoiled.

And as she now towered before him, a beautiful embodiment of wrath, he knew not whether he loved her more than he feared her, yet the desire to possess her and to tame her was strong within him.
"Am I a baggage of your camps," she questioned furiously, "to be so handled by you?
Do you forget that I am the niece of Guidobaldo, a lady of the house of Rovere, and that from my cradle I have known naught but the respect of all men, be they born never so high?
That to such by my birth I have the right?
Must I tell you in plain words, sir, that though born to a throne, your manners are those of a groom?
And must I tell you, ere you will realise it, that no man to whom with my own lips I have not given the right, shall set hands upon me as you have done ?" Her eyes flashed, her voice rose, and higher raged the storm; and Gian Maria was so tossed and shattered by it that he could but humbly sue for pardon.
"What shall it signify that I am a Duke," he pleaded timidly, "since I am become a lover?
What is a Duke then?
He is but a man, and as the meanest of his subjects his love must take expression.