ause we were beaten we were going to rest for a very long while, and
that your Carlo of yesterday was going to be your Carlo of to-day?"

Vittoria tacitly confessed to it.

"Ay," he pursued, "when you wrote to him in the Val d'Intelvi, you
supposed you had only to say, 'I am ready,' which was then the case. You
made your summer and left the fruits to hang, and now you are astounded
that seasons pass and fruits drop. You should have come to this place, if
but for a pair of days, and so have fixed one matter in the chapter. This
is how the chapter has run on. I see I talk to a stunned head; you are
thinking that Carlo's love for you can't have changed: and it has not,
but occasion has gone and times have changed. Now listen. The countess
desired the marriage. Carlo could not go to you in Milan with the sword
in his hand. Therefore you had to come to him. He waited for you, perhaps
for his own preposterous lover's sake as much as to make his mother's
heart easy. If she loses him she loses everything, unless he leaves a
wife to her care and the hope that her House will not be extinct, which
is possibly not much more the weakness of old aristocracy than of human
nature.

"Meantime, his brothers in arms had broken up and entered Piedmont, and
he remained waiting for you still. You are thinking that he had not
waited a month. But if four months finished Lombardy, less than one month
is quite sufficient to do the same for us little beings. He met the
Countess d'Isorella here. You have to thank her for seeing him at all, so
don't wrinkle your forehead yet. Luciano Romara is drilling his men in
Piedmont; Angelo Guidascarpi has gone there. Carlo was considering it his
duty to join Luciano, when he met this lady, and she has apparently
succeeded in altering his plans. Luciano and his band will go to Rome.
Carlo fancies that another blow will be struck for Lombardy. This lady
should know; the point is, whether she can be trusted. She persists in
declaring that Carlo's duty is to remain, and--I cannot tell how, for I
am as a child among women--she has persuaded him of her sincerity. Favour
me now with your clearest understanding, and deliver it from feminine
sensations of any description for just two minutes."

Agostino threw away the end of a cigarette and looked for firmness in
Vittoria's eyes.

"This Countess d'Isorella is opposed to Carlo's marriage at present. She
says that she is betraying the king's secrets, and has no rel