rina,' he said, brushing delicately at her dress;
'I thought it might be paint.' He smiled to reassure her, and then he
dived again, murmuring: 'It must be something sticking to the dress.
Pardon me.' With that he went to the bell. 'I will ring up my daughter's
maid. Or Laura--where is Laura?'

The Signora Piaveni had walked to the window. This antiquated fussiness
of the dilettante little nobleman was sickening to her.

'Probably you expect to discover a revolutionary symbol in the lines of
the signorina's dress,' she said.

'A revolutionary symbol!--my dear! my dear!' The count reproved his
daughter. 'Is not our signorina a pure artist, accomplishing easily three
octaves? aha! Three!' and he rubbed his hands. 'But, three good octaves!'
he addressed Vittoria seriously and admonishingly. 'It is a
fortune-millions! It is precisely the very grandest heritage! It is an
army!'

'I trust that it may be!' said Vittoria, with so deep and earnest a ring
of her voice that the count himself, malicious as his ejaculations had
been, was astonished. At that instant Laura cried from the window: 'These
horses will go mad.'

The exclamation had the desired effect.

'Eh?--pardon me, signorina,' said the count, moving half-way to the
window, and then askant for his hat. The clatter of the horses' hoofs
sent him dashing through the doorway, at which place his daughter stood
with his hat extended. He thanked and blessed her for the kindly
attention, and in terror lest the signorina should think evil of him as
'one of the generation of the hasty,' he said, 'Were it anything but
horses! anything but horses! one's horses!--ha!' The audible hoofs called
him off. He kissed the tips of his fingers, and tripped out.

The signora stepped rapidly to the window, and leaning there, cried a
word to the coachman, who signalled perfect comprehension, and
immediately the count's horses were on their hind-legs, chafing and
pulling to right and left, and the street was tumultuous with them. She
flung down the window, seized Vittoria's cheeks in her two hands, and
pressed the head upon her bosom. 'He will not disturb us again,' she
said, in quite a new tone, sliding her hands from the cheeks to the
shoulders and along the arms to the fingers'-ends, which they clutched
lovingly. 'He is of the old school, friend of my heart! and besides, he
has but two pairs of horses, and one he keeps in Vienna. We live in the
hope that our masters will pay us better