llow, took half-a-dozen puffs of a cigarette, and then requested Irma
to ring for her maid. "Do nothing till you see me again," she said;
"and take my advice: always get to bed before midnight, or you'll have
unmanageable wrinkles in a couple of years. If you had been in bed at a
prudent hour to-night, this scandal would not have occurred."

"How can I be in bed? How could I help it?" moaned Irma, replying to the
abstract rule, and the perplexing illustration of its force.

Violetta dismissed her. "After all, my wish is to save my poor
Amaranto," she mused. "I am only doing now what I should have been doing
in the daylight; and if I can't stop him, the Government must; and they
will. Whatever the letter contained, I can anticipate it. He knows my
profession and my necessities. I must have money. Why not from the rich
German woman whom he jilted?"

She attributed Anna's apparent passion of revenge to a secret passion of
unrequited love. What else was implied by her willingness to part with
land and money for the key to his machinations?

Violetta would have understood a revenge directed against Angelo
Guidascarpi, as the slayer of Anna's brother. But of him Anna had only
inquired once, and carelessly, whether he was in Milan. Anna's mystical
semi-patriotism--prompted by her hatred of Vittoria, hatred of Carlo as
Angelo's cousin and protector, hatred of the Italy which held the three,
who never took the name Tedesco on their tongues without loathing--was
perfectly hidden from this shrewd head.

Some extra patrols were in the streets. As she stepped into the
carriage, a man rushed up, speaking hoarsely and inarticulately, and
jumped in beside her. She had discerned Barto Rizzo in time to give
directions to her footman, before she was addressed by a body of
gendarmes in pursuit, whom she mystified by entreating them to enter
her house and search it through, if they supposed that any evil-doer
had taken advantage of the open door. They informed her that a man had
escaped from the civil prison. "Poor creature!" said the countess, with
womanly pity; "but you must see that he is not in my house. How could
three of you let one escape?" She drove off laughing at their vehement
assertion that he would not have escaped from them. Barto Rizzo made her
conduct him to Countess Ammiani's gates.

Violetta was frightened by his eyes when she tried to persuade him in
her best coaxing manner to avoid Count Ammiani. In fact she apprehe