m here! I must have omitted a prayer, for he would have
been at Vercelli now with Luciano and Emilio, and you might have gone to
him; but he met this woman, who has convinced him that Piedmont will make
a Winter march, and that his marriage must be delayed." The countess
raised her face and drooped her hands from the wrists, exclaiming, "If I
have lately omitted one prayer, enlighten me, blessed heaven! I am blind;
I cannot see for my son; I am quite blind. I do not love the woman;
therefore I doubt myself. You, my daughter, tell me your thought of her,
tell me what you think. Young eyes observe; young heads are sometimes
shrewd in guessing."

Vittoria said, after a pause, "I will believe her to be true, if she
supports the king." It was hardly truthful speaking on her part.

"How can Carlo have been persuaded!" the countess sighed.

"By me?" Victoria asked herself, and for a moment she was exulting.

She spoke from that emotion when it had ceased to animate her.

"Carlo was angry with the king. He echoed Agostino, but Agostino does not
sting as he did, and Carlo cannot avoid seeing what the king has
sacrificed. Perhaps the Countess d'Isorella has shown him promises of
fresh aid in the king's handwriting. Suffering has made Carlo Alberto one
with the Republicans, if he had other ambitions once. And Carlo dedicates
his blood to Lombardy: he does rightly. Dear countess--my mother! I have
made him wait for me; I will be patient in waiting for him. I know that
Countess d'Isorella is intimate with the king. There is a man named Barto
Rizzo, who thinks me a guilty traitress, and she is making use of this
man. That must be her reason for prohibiting the marriage. She cannot be
false if she is capable of uniting extreme revolutionary agents and the
king in one plot, I think; I do not know." Vittoria concluded her perfect
expression of confidence with this atoning doubtfulness.

Countess Ammiani obtained her consent that she would not quit her side.

After Violetta had gone, Carlo, though he shunned secret interviews,
addressed his betrothed as one who was not strange to his occupation and
the trial his heart was undergoing. She could not doubt that she was
beloved, in spite of the colourlessness and tonelessness of a love that
appealed to her intellect. He showed her a letter he had received from
Laura, laughing at its abuse of Countess d'Isorella, and the sarcasms
levelled at himself.

In this letter Laura said that she