at you have done," said Lena caressingly.

"You at least will try to reward our truest hero, and make up to him for
your sister's unkindness, will you not?" Anna replied with a cajolery
wonderfully like a sincere expression of her wishes. "He will be a good
husband.. He has proved it by having been so faithful a--a lover. So you
may be sure of him. And when he is yours, do not let him fight again,
Lena, for I have a sickening presentiment that his next duel is his
last."

"Tell me," Lena entreated her, "pray tell me what horrible thing you
have done to prevent your marrying him."

"With their pride and their laughter," Anna made answer; "the fools!
were they to sting us perpetually and not suffer for it? That woman, the
Countess Alessandra, as she's now called--have you forgotten that she
helped our Paul's assassin to escape? was she not eternally plotting
against Austria? And I say that I love Austria. I love my country; I
plot for my country. She and her husband plot, and I plot to thwart
them. I have ruined myself in doing it. Oh, my heart! why has it
commenced beating again? Why did Weisspriess come here? He offended me.
He refused to do my orders, and left me empty-handed, and if he suffers
too," Anna relieved a hard look with a smile of melancholy, "I hope he
will not; I cannot say more."

"And I'm to console him if he does?" said Lena.

"At least, I shall be out of the way," said Anna. "I have still money
enough to make me welcome in a convent."

"I am to marry him?" Lena persisted, and half induced Anna to act a
feeble part, composed of sobs and kisses and full confession of her
plight. Anna broke from her in time to leave what she had stated of
herself vague and self-justificatory, so that she kept her pride, and
could forgive, as she was ready to do even so far as to ask forgiveness
in turn, when with her awakened enamoured heart she heard Vittoria sing
at the concert of Pericles. Countess Alessandra's divine gift, which she
would not withhold, though in a misery of apprehension; her grave eyes,
which none could accuse of coldness, though they showed no emotion;
her simple noble manner that seemed to lift her up among the forces
threatening her; these expressions of a superior soul moved Anna under
the influence of the incomparable voice to pass over envious contrasts,
and feel the voice and the nature were one in that bosom. Could it be
the same as the accursed woman who had stood before her at Meran? S