mission to visit you. It
was accorded. To the devil with our days of benignity! She was from
Turin. The shuffle has made her my hostess for the nonce. I will go to
her. You, sir," the count turned to Wilfrid--"you will stay below. Are
you in the pay of the insurgents?"

Wilfrid, the weakest of human beings where women were involved with him,
did one of the hardest things which can task a young man's fortitude: he
looked his superior in the face, and neither blenched, nor frowned, nor
spoke.

Ammiani spoke for him. "There is no pay given in our ranks."

"The licence to rob is supposed to be an equivalent," said the count.

Countess d'Isorella herself came downstairs, with profuse apologies for
the absence of all her male domestics, and many delicate dimples about
her mouth in uttering them. Her look at Ammiani struck Wilfrid as having
a peculiar burden either of meaning or of passion in it. The count
grimaced angrily when he heard that his sister Lena was not yet able to
bear the fatigue of a walk to the citadel. "I fear you must all be my
guests, for an hour at least," said the countess.

Wilfrid was left pacing the hall. He thought he had never beheld so
splendid a person, or one so subjugatingly gracious. Her speech and
manner poured oil on the uncivil Austrian nobleman. What perchance had
stricken Lena?

He guessed; and guessed it rightly. A folded scrap of paper signed by the
Countess of Lenkenstein was brought to him.

It said:--"Are you making common cause with the rebels? Reply. One asks
who should be told."

He wrote:--"I am an outcast of the army. I fight as a volunteer with the
K. K. troops. Could I abandon them in their peril?"

The touch of sentiment he appended for Lena's comfort. He was too
strongly impressed by the new vision of beauty in the house for his
imagination to be flushed by the romantic posture of his devotion to a
trailing flag.

No other message was delivered. Ammiani presently descended and obtained
a guard from the barricade; word was sent on to the barricades in advance
toward the citadel. Wilfrid stood aside as Count Lenkenstein led the
ladies to the door, bearing Lena on his arm. She passed her lover veiled.
The count said, "You follow." He used the menial second person plural of
German, and repeated it peremptorily.

"I follow no civilian," said Wilfrid.

"Remember, sir, that if you are seen with arms in your hands, and are not
in the ranks, you run the chances of being h