flame across faces that took the light and let it go. They returned
to their carriage exhausted. The ways were almost impassable for
carriage-wheels. While they were toiling on and exchanging their drenched
clothes, Vittoria heard Merthyr's voice speaking to Beppo on the box. He
was saying that Captain Gambier lay badly wounded; brandy was wanted for
him. She flung a cloak over Laura, and handed out the flask with a naked
arm. It was not till she saw him again that she remembered or even felt
that he had kissed the arm. A spot of sweet fire burned on it just where
the soft fulness of a woman's arm slopes to the bend. He chid her for
being on the field and rejoiced in a breath, for the carriage and its
contents helped to rescue his wounded brother in arms from probable
death. Gambier, wounded in thigh and ankle by rifle-shot, was placed in
the carriage. His clothes were saturated with the soil of Goito; but
wounded and wet, he smiled gaily, and talked sweet boyish English.
Merthyr gave the driver directions to wind along up the Mincio.
"Georgiana will be at the nearest village--she has an instinct for
battle-fields, or keeps spies in her pay," he said.

"Tell her I am safe. We march to cut them (the enemy) off from Verona, and
I can't leave. The game is in our hands. We shall give you Venice."

Georgiana was found at the nearest village. Gambier's wounds had been
dressed by an army-surgeon. She looked at the dressing, and said that it
would do for six hours. This singular person had fully qualified herself
to attend on a soldier-brother. She had studied medicine for that
purpose, and she had served as nurse in a London hospital. Her nerves
were completely under control. She could sit in attendance by a sick-bed
for hours, hearing distant cannon, and the brawl of soldiery and
vagabonds in the street, without a change of countenance. Her dress was
plain black from throat to heel, with a skull cap of white, like a
Moravian sister. Vittoria reverenced her; but Georgiana's manner in
return was cold aversion, so much more scornful than disdain that it
offended Laura, who promptly put her finger on the blot in the fair
character with the word 'Jealousy;' but a single word is too broad a mark
to be exactly true. "She is a perfect example of your English," Laura
said. "Brave, good, devoted, admirable--ice at the heart. The judge of
others, of course. I always respected her; I never liked her; and I
should be afraid of a comparis