THE NINTH MAN
and as he answered her we were so delivered from our shame and apprehension that it was only as he went away that my lady asked again, "When shall this conquered and unhappy town walk past its conqueror?"
"In three days," he answered. And as he went, my lord Count Bartolommeo Conti came clanking in, and the Brother Minor greeted him as he had my lady, to which my lord made no answer at all. And when the Brother Minor was gone:
"What did here this lout?" asks he,
"That is Brother Agnello—he was here at my request," my lady made answer in her softest tone of most level insolence, and she turned and watched the Brother Minor as he wandered aimless and unafraid through the shifting panic.
