"Your stories, mistress, would be unsuited for the court, and your ballads best unsung," he retorted. "I came, not to sharpen my wits, but to learn from whom the thief-friar got the small piece of silver you gave your consort, and, also, to procure a horse."
Her brazen eyes wavered. "A horse and a fool flying," she muttered. "Even what the cards showed. The fool seeking the duke!" A puzzled look crossed her face. "But the duke is here?" she continued to herself. "A strange riddle! All the signs show devilment, but what it is--"
"Good Nanette," interrupted the jester, satirically, "I have no time for spells or incantation."
"How dared you come here," she said, hoarsely, "after--"
"After your mate proved but an indifferent servant of yours?" he concluded, meeting her sullen gaze with one so stern and inflexible that before it her eyes fell.
"Do you not know," she said, endeavoring to maintain a hardened front, "I have but to say the word, and all these friends of mine would tear you to pieces? What would you do, my pretty fellows, an I ask you?" she cried out, her voice rising audaciously. "Would you suffer this duke's jester to stand against me?"
Glances of suspicion and animosity shot from a score of eyes; fists were half-clenched; knives appeared in a trice from the concealment of rags, and a low murmur arose from the gathering. Even the imbecile morio, nature's trembling coward, became suddenly valiant, and, with huge frame uplifted, seemed about to spring savagely upon the fool. An expression of disgust replaced all other feeling on the features of the duke's _plaisant_.
"Spare me your threats, Nanette," he replied, coldly. "Had you intended to set them on me, you would have done it long ere this."
The woman hesitated. His calm, almost contemptuous, confidence was not without its effect upon her. Had he trembled, she would have spoken, but before his disdain, and the gay splendor of his attire, conspicuous amid rags from rubbish heaps, she felt a sudden consciousness of her own unclean environment; at the same time unusual warnings in her conjurations recurred to her. Something about him--was it dignity or pride or a nameless fear she herself experienced but could not understand?--beat down her eyes and she turned them doggedly away.