He struggled with his rising choler; strove desperately to clutch this thing that he felt was slipping from him. 'Would God accept a pledge that makes you a cheat? Do you suppose they have no sense of honour in Heaven?' Then abruptly he asked yet another question. 'Have you told your father of these crazy notions?'
She frowned at this glimpse of the roughness of which he was capable.
'It was in my mind to tell him today.'
'My God! You are serious, then, in this fraudulent thought; this . . . this swindle? By the Host! Can you dream that your father will be a party to it? Your father—I thank God—is a man of honour, a man who keeps to his pledged word. Have no illusions about that, Isotta. I have loyally done my part in what was agreed between us, and he will not see me cheated of my . . . my just reward.'
She looked away from him. 'Should you consider it a reward to take to wife an unwilling maid?'
He had a sense of beating his head against a cold, unyielding wall of fraudulent obstinacy. Fury blinded him. It almost choked him. 'A maid!' he jeered in a thick voice. 'And are you a maid? Are you?'
That drew her eyes to him, and he laughed brutally, hideously into her face. 'Are you even fit to take the veil? To enter upon the mystic nuptials? Have you asked yourself that? Oh, I understand you. You would cheat me now in this, as you cheated me before with lies; persuaded me of the innocence of your visit to that dog's lodging. Will you so easily persuade your father of it?'
'Do you mean to tell him?'
The question suggested to him where his power might yet lie.
'As God's my witness, unless you come to your senses and fulfil your promise.'
That, he thought, should checkmate her. But she looked at him with her unfailing, disconcerting calm.
'So that, soiled as you believe me to be, false, hypocritical, and lying as you tell me that I am, you are still content to take me to wife for the sake of my endowments? That is noble!'
'Sneer all you please. I have earned you, and I will be paid.'
'Even though you dispute me with God?'
'With God or the devil, madame.'
'Will you ring, Leonardo, and bid them ask my father and brother to come here?'
He made no movement to obey. 'What is that for? What are you going to do?'
'If you will ring, you will discover. I shall tell you in my father's presence.'
He glowered upon her. How baffling and obstinate she could be in that accursed repose which he could not shake.
'Remember what I have said. You are warned. Either you fulfil the sacred promise that you made me, or Count Pizzamano shall learn that he has a wanton for his daughter.'
For the first time she showed a flash of resentment. 'You would do well to remember that I have a brother.'
But that veiled threat he met with a fleering laugh. 'To be sure! The heroic Domenico! You will send him to seek satisfaction of me for imputations upon his sister's honour. He may find it a very different matter from emptying guns upon a French warship from a safe distance.' He drew himself up. 'Send this little hero of the Lido to me, by all means. You may have heard that I can take care of myself.'
'When supported by three bullies. Yes, I've heard that. Will you ring? The longer you delay it, the more disgusting I am finding you. You should judge how this interview has reconciled me to our nuptials.'
'Bah!' he retorted. 'Your hypocrisy nauseates me. You seize on this, so as to buttress your swindling pretences.' As he spoke, he swung round in the loggia to do at last her bidding, only to discover that it was no longer necessary. He had delayed too long. Count Pizzamano and Domenico were in the room beyond.
Seeing them, he grew suddenly afraid. How much had they overheard, and how much must they now be told in explanation?
Vendramin's case was that of every blackmailer. His power endures only so long as the revelation dreaded by his victim is not made. So here. Isotta's fear of the revelation might be a lever to obtain his will. The revelation itself, whilst damaging to her, could nothing profit him.
He stood now a little abashed under the grave, weary eyes of the Count.
The strain of the last few weeks had told heavily upon Count Pizzamano. Much of the man's normal calm urbanity had deserted him.
He advanced, Domenico following a pace behind him; and so they came to the threshold of the loggia. He was very cold and very stern.
'I do not know, Leonardo, when such words as I have overheard from you have been uttered under this roof before. I trust never. Will you tell me the occasion of terms so wanting in respect to my daughter and so threatening to my son?'
'For his threats to me . . .' Domenico was beginning, when his father's raised hand imposed silence upon him.
Vendramin could see nothing for it but to begin at the point which he had hoped would never have been reached.
