Gamba, after a
moment's reflection, drew a key from his pocket.
"May it please your Highness," he said, "this unlocks the door of the
hunting-lodge at Pontesordo. The place has been deserted these many
years, because of its bad name, and I have more than once found it a
convenient shelter when I had reasons for wishing to be private. At this
season there is no fear of poison from the marshes, and if your Highness
desires I will see that the lady finds her way there before sunrise."
The sun had hardly risen the next morning when the Duke himself set
forth. He rode alone, dressed like one of his own esquires, and gave the
word unremarked to the sleepy sentinel at the gate. As it closed behind
him and he set out down the long road that led to the chase, it seemed
to him that the morning solitude was thronged with spectral memories.
Melancholy and fanciful they flitted before him, now in the guise of
Cerveno and Momola, now of Maria Clementina and himself. Every detail of
the scene was interwoven with the fibres of early association, from the
far off years when, as a lonely child on the farm at Pontesordo, he had
gazed across the marsh at the mysterious woodlands of the chase, to the
later day when, in the deserted hunting-lodge, the Duchess had flung her
whip at the face in the Venice mirror.
He pressed forward impatiently, and presently the lodge rose before him
in its grassy solitude. The level sunbeams had not yet penetrated the
surrounding palisade of boughs, and the house lay in a chill twilight
that seemed an emanation from its mouldering walls.
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