them listening to the voice of one
who stood a few steps above them holding a banner. She gave an outcry of
bitter joy. It was the Chief. On one side of him was Agostino, in the
midst of memorable heads that were unknown to her. The countess refused
to stay, though Vittoria strained her hands together in extreme entreaty
that she might for a few moments hear what the others were hearing. "I
speak for my son, and I forbid it," Countess Ammiani said. Vittoria fell
back and closed her eyes to cherish the vision. All those faces raised to
the one speaker under the dark sky were beautiful. He had breathed some
new glory of hope in them, making them shine beneath the overcast
heavens, as when the sun breaks from an evening cloud and flushes the
stems of a company of pine-trees.

Along the road to Milan she kept imagining his utterance until her heart
rose with music. A delicious stream of music, thin as poor tears, passed
through her frame, like a life reviving. She reached Milan in a mood to
bear the idea of temporary defeat. Music had forsaken her so long that
celestial reassurance seemed to return with it.

Her mother was at Zotti's, very querulous, but determined not to leave
the house and the few people she knew. She had, as she told her daughter,
fretted so much on her account that she hardly knew whether she was glad
to see her. Tea, of course, she had given up all thoughts of; but now
coffee was rising, and the boasted sweet bread of Lombardy was something
to look at! She trusted that Emilia would soon think of singing no more,
and letting people rest: she might sing when she wanted money. A letter
recently received from Mr. Pericles said that Italy was her child's ruin,
and she hoped Emilia was ready to do as he advised, and hurry to England,
where singing did not upset people, and people lived like real
Christians, not----Vittoria flapped her hand, and would not hear of the
unchristian crimes of the South. As regarded the expected defence of
Milan, the little woman said, that if it brought on a bombardment, she
would call it unpardonable wickedness, and only hoped that her daughter
would repent.

Zotti stood by, interpreting the English to himself by tones. "The
amiable donnina is not of our persuasion," he observed. "She remains
dissatisfied with patriotic Milan. I have exhibited to her my dabs of
bread through all the processes of making and baking. It is in vain. She
rejects analogy. She is wilful as a principe