e question, "Why?"

Laura stated the physical necessity with Italian naivete.

"If I can," said Vittoria, and blinked to get a tear; but laughter helped
as well to relieve her, and it came on their return to the carriage. They
found the spy Luigi sitting beside the driver. He informed them that
Antonio-Pericles had been in the track of the army ever since their
flight from Turin; daily hurrying off with whip of horses at the sound of
cannon-shot, and gradually stealing back to the extreme rear. This day he
had flown from Oliosi to Cavriani, and was, perhaps, retracing his way
already as before, on fearful toe-tips. Luigi acted the caution of one
who stepped blindfolded across hot iron plates. Vittoria, without a spark
of interest, asked why the Signor Antonio should be following the army.

"Why, it's to find you, signorina."

Luigi's comical emphasis conjured up in a jumbled picture the devotion,
the fury, the zeal, the terror of Antonio-Pericles--a mixture of
demoniacal energy and ludicrous trepidation. She imagined his long
figure, fantastical as a shadow, off at huge strides, and back, with eyes
sliding swiftly to the temples, and his odd serpent's head raised to peer
across the plains and occasionally to exclaim to the reasonable heavens
in anger at men and loathing of her. She laughed ungovernably. Luigi
exclaimed that, albeit in disgrace with the signor Antonio, he had been
sent for to serve him afresh, and had now been sent forward to entreat
the gracious signorina to grant her sincerest friend and adorer an
interview. She laughed at Pericles, but in truth she almost loved the man
for his worship of her Art, and representation of her dear peaceful
practice of it.

The interview between them took place at Oliosi. There, also, she met
Georgiana Ford, the half-sister of Merthyr Powys, who told her that
Merthyr and Augustus Gambier were in the ranks of a volunteer contingent
in the king's army, and might have been present at Pastrengo. Georgiana
held aloof from battle-fields, her business being simply to serve as
Merthyr's nurse in case of wounds, or to see the last of him in case of
death. She appeared to have no enthusiasm. She seconded strongly the
vehement persuasions addressed by Pericles to Vittoria. Her disapproval
of the presence of her sex on fields of battle was precise. Pericles had
followed the army to give Vittoria one last chance, he said, and drag her
away from this sick country, as he called it, p