could ever be doubled in this world. "Could it happen to me?" she asked
herself, and smiled, as she half-fashioned the words on her lips, "It is
a pretty uniform."

Her reverie was broken by a hiss of "Traitress!" from the woman opposite.

She coloured guiltily, tried to speak, and sat trembling. A divination of
intense hatred had perhaps read the thought within her breast: or it was
a mere outburst of hate. The woman's face was like the wearing away of
smoke from a spot whence shot has issued. Vittoria walked for the
remainder of the day. That fearful companion oppressed her. She felt that
one who followed armies should be cast in such a frame, and now desired
with all her heart to render full obedience to Carlo, and abide in
Brescia, or even in Milan--a city she thought of shyly.

The march was hurried to the slopes of the Vicentino, for enemies were
thick in this district. Pericles refused to quit the soldiers, though
Count Karl used persuasion. The young nobleman said to Vittoria, "Be on
your guard when you meet my sister Anna. I tell you, we can be as
revengeful as any of you: but you will exonerate me. I do my duty; I seek
to do no more."

At an inn that they reached toward evening she saw the innkeeper shoot a
little ball of paper at an Italian corporal, who put his foot on it and
picked it up. The soldier subsequently passed through the ranks of his
comrades, gathering winks and grins. They were to have rested at the inn,
but Count Karl was warned by scouts, which was sufficient to make
Pericles cling to him in avoidance of the volunteers, of whom mainly he
was in terror. He looked ague-stricken. He would not listen to her, or to
reason in any shape. "I am on the sea--shall I trust a boat? I stick to a
ship," he said. The soldiers marched till midnight. It was arranged that
the carriage should strike off for Schio at dawn. The soldiers bivouacked
on the slope of one of the low undulations falling to the Vicentino
plain. Vittoria spread her cloak, and lay under bare sky, not suffering
the woman to be ejected from the carriage. Hitherto Luigi had avoided
her. Under pretence of doubling Count Karl's cloak as a pillow for her
head, he whispered, "If the signorina hears shots let her lie on the
ground flat as a sheet." The peacefulness surrounding her precluded
alarm. There was brilliant moonlight, and the host of stars, all dim; and
first they beckoned her up to come away from trouble, and then, through
long gaz