e; a
fortress face; strong and massive, and honourable in ruin, though
stripped of every flower.

This lady in her girlhood had been the one lamb of the family dedicated
to heaven. Paolo, the General, her lover, had wrenched her from that fate
to share with him a life of turbulent sorrows till she should behold the
blood upon his grave. She, like Laura Fiaveni, had bent her head above a
slaughtered husband, but, unlike Laura, Marcellina Ammiani had not buried
her heart with him. Her heart and all her energies had been his while he
lived; from the visage of death it turned to her son. She had accepted
the passion for Italy from Paolo; she shared it with Carlo. Italian girls
of that period had as little passion of their own as flowers kept out of
sunlight have hues. She had given her son to her country with that
intensely apprehensive foresight of a mother's love which runs quick as
Eastern light from the fervour of the devotion to the remote realization
of the hour of the sacrifice, seeing both in one. Other forms of love,
devotion in other bosoms, may be deluded, but hers will not be. She sees
the sunset in the breast of the springing dawn. Often her son Carlo stood
a ghost in her sight. With this haunting prophetic vision, it was only a
mother, who was at the same time a supremely noble woman, that could feel
all human to him notwithstanding. Her heart beat thick and fast when
Carlo and Luciano entered the morning-room where she sat, and stopped to
salute her in turn.

'Well?' she said without betraying anxiety or playing at carelessness.

Carlo answered, 'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. I think
that's the language of peaceful men.'

'You are to be peaceful men to-morrow, my Carlo?'

'The thing is in Count Medole's hands,' said Luciano; 'and he is
constitutionally of our Agostino's opinion that we are bound to wait till
the Gods kick us into action; and, as Agostino says, Medole has raised
himself upon our shoulders so as to be the more susceptible to their
wishes when they blow a gale.'

He informed her of the momentary thwarting of the conspiracy, and won
Carlo's gratitude by not speaking of the suspicion which had fallen on
Vittoria.

'Medole,' he said, 'has the principal conduct of the business in Milan,
as you know, countess. Our Chief cannot be everywhere at once; so Medole
undertakes to decide for him here in old Milan. He decided yesterday
afternoon to put off our holiday for what he calls a