'Be sure,' said Corner, 'that they shall be given due weight.' Then very courteously he inclined his head. 'We are grateful to you, Lord Count, for your assistance.'

Perceiving in this his dismissal, Count Pizzamano bowed gravely to the Three, and passed out, deeply troubled in spirit.

Barberigo shuffled restlessly. 'Need we waste more words on this? The matter is clear, I think.'

Corner turned upon him his gentle, rather whimsical smile. 'I envy you your clarity of vision. My own poor eyes seek to pierce a fog. In what case are you, Messer Gabriel?'

Gabriel shrugged his narrow shoulders. 'Just lost in all the conjectures we have raised.'

'Surely,' grumbled Barberigo, 'it is not in your mind to pursue them further.'

'That would be unprofitable, we should merely travel in a circle.'

'And so say I,' the old man agreed. He cleared his throat shrilly. 'To judgment, then.'

Corner was wistful. 'Would your excellency venture to deliver judgment in a matter so delicately balanced as is this?'

'Would I? Is not that my function? These are not times for hesitations. Beset as we are by spies and enemies, it is our duty to give the State the benefit of any doubt.'

'It is our first duty to be just,' said Corner.

Gabriel turned squarely to the red inquisitor in expostulation. 'But if we are neither to debate the case further nor yet to deliver judgment upon it, what then?'

'Postpone,' said Corner, and tightened his lips. 'The matter being so evenly balanced, as I have said, and as you must agree, it only remains to wait until some fresh discovery disturbs that balance. That is my considered view. If you cannot concur, we shall have to refer the matter to the Council of Ten.'

'You relieve me,' said the doleful Gabriel. 'I concur cordially.'

Together they now looked at Barberigo, and waited. The old man blinked at them with his watery eyes. His head shook more than ever in annoyance.

'I'll not oppose you,' he said at last. 'But this postponement is a waste of time. That young man was of an effrontery that I have always associated with guilt. And I don't want for experience. It would be more merciful not to keep him lingering in suspense, for it is written that he must come to the strangler in the end. Still, since you seem set on it, we will postpone the sentence.'

CHAPTER XXXIII

CASUS BELLI

'Isotta, my dear, did Marc ever tell you that he was married?'

The Count sat at table with his Countess and their daughter. Supper was at an end, and the servants had left the room.

Isotta looked up with a smile; and smiling was an art that Isotta seemed lately to have lost. 'He must have forgotten to do so,' she said, and her father perceived that she mocked him.

'That is what I supposed.' He was very grave. He, too, had smiled little of late.

The Countess, looking from her husband to her daughter, supposed that a jest was passing which she did not understand. She begged to be enlightened. The Count responded clearly and definitely in a manner startling to both mother and daughter. Isotta, recovering, shook her dark head, and spoke confidently.

'There is an error somewhere in your information.'

Francesco Pizzamano, grave-eyed, denied the possibility of error. He stated whence his information came, and now, at last, Isotta's confidence deserted her.

'Oh! But it is unbelievable!' Her eyes were very round and black in the scared pallor of her face.

'Truth so often is,' said her father. 'Myself at first I could not credit it; not until it was admitted by Marc himself. Since then, considering it, I perceive that he must have had sound reason for his secrecy.'

'What reason could possibly exist?' Her voice shook.

He hunched his shoulders and spread his hands. 'In these times, when a man carries the burdens borne by Marc, reasons are not lacking. The inquisitors have discovered a reason, a very specious reason, that is entirely unfavourable to him. The true reason, whilst putting an entirely different appearance on it, may run it fairly close. What I most find to respect in Marc is that he is a man who will sacrifice everything to the cause he serves.'

'But if the inquisitors . . .' she began, and then broke off. Abruptly she asked: 'Is he in danger?'

Slowly the Count shook his head. 'My chief hope for him lies in the fact that Catarin is not by any means a fool.'

She questioned him closely, feverishly, upon the precise words that had passed between inquisitors and prisoner. When he had answered her with scrupulous accuracy, she sat as if drugged for a while; then, pleading weariness, she rose from the table, and begged them to excuse her.

When she had gone, Francesco Pizzamano looked gloomily at his Countess.

'Do you judge her to be deeply hurt by this?'

The handsome countess was tragic. 'The poor child looked as if she had taken her death-wound. I'll go to her.' She rose.

'A moment, my dear.'

The Count held out his arm. She came to him. Encircling her waist, he drew her to him where he sat. 'It might be better to leave her. I feared she would take it badly. Though God knows why.'

'I think I know, too.'

The Count slowly nodded. 'All things considered, my dear, it is surely best so. Resignation comes more readily when the thing desired is seen to exist no more.'

She set a hand upon his head. 'You are not hard, Franceschino. I have never found you so. And yet, where your own child is concerned, you consider nothing but expediency. Think of her heart, my dear.'

'I am thinking of it. I do not want it hurt more than it must be. I do not want it to bear more suffering than I have brought upon it. That is why I almost welcome a state of things that imposes resignation.'

'I scarcely understand you, dear.'

'Perhaps that is because you do not credit me with a conscience. I have gambled my daughter. Used her as a stake in a game played for Venice. And the game is lost. I have sacrificed her to no purpose. Just squandered her. I have no more illusions. The Venetian sun has set. Twilight is upon us. Soon, very soon, it will be dark.' His voice was heavy with despair. 'But this I want you to know, my dear: I should never have asked such a sacrifice of my Isotta if both she and I had not believed that Marc was dead. Nor would she have accepted it. The discovery that he lived was tragic. Now that to her he becomes, as it were, dead again, she may resign herself once more to this futile sacrifice to which we are pledged. That is why I say that perhaps it is best so. They loved each other, she and Marc, and he was worthy of her.'

'You can say that in the face of this discovery?'

He nodded. 'Because I believe that he has given himself in marriage in some such spirit as that in which I have given her. To serve a cause so great that it commands all that a man may give. When he made answer on this point today, he had the martyred air of one who has immolated himself. If that does not prove true, then I know nothing of human nature.' He rose heavily. 'Go to her now, dear. Tell her that. She may find comfort in it and strength. God help the child! God help us all, my dear!'

But Isotta's burden was heavier than they knew, or than she allowed even her mother to suspect. When at last she could believe this thing, far from bringing her the resignation her father hoped, it robbed her of that to which she had already won. Circumstances might forbid that Marc and she should ever be man and wife; but at least she had taken comfort in the thought of a spiritual bond between them, which should make them one eternally. And now this bond had snapped, leaving her terribly alone, adrift and afraid.

She listened to her father's theory, conveyed to her by her mother. It brought her no conviction. The only explanation that she found was one that loaded her with humiliation. When she had sought him that morning at his lodging, she had done so upon too rash an assumption that it was for her that he had come to Venice. Instead, as it now seemed, he had come solely in the pursuit of his political mission. Not to wound her pride, he had refrained from disillusioning her. And that, too, may have been a reason for his subsequent silence on the subject of his marriage.

The fugitive words of tenderness and hope which he had since uttered she now explained as meaning only that he hoped to deliver her from a betrothal which he perceived to be odious to her. That betrothal lost none of its odiousness as a result of what was now discovered. On the contrary, this wall that had arisen between Marc and herself, in isolating her, robbed her of what little power of endurance remained.

Only if this great spiritual lassitude which beset her should finally conquer her pride would she now submit to marriage with Vendramin.

In those days she began to discover in herself a vocation for a religious life. Nauseated with the world and the meaningless perpetual strife with which man filled it, she conceived a yearning for the peace of the cloister, perceived in it a refuge, a sanctuary which none would venture to deny her. Vendramin might dispute her with man; but he would never dare to dispute her with God.

In the contemplation of this, her courage was restored, and only Domenico restrained her from an immediate declaration of the intention.

He had learnt from his father the little that was known of Marc's marriage, which is to say the little that was disclosed at the trial before the inquisitors. But by an odd chance he learnt it on the evening of a day when he had actually made the acquaintance of the Vicomtesse de Saulx.