soft an attendant as a
suffering woman could have:

Merthyr did not sleep, and in the morning Vittoria said to him, "You
want to be active, my friend. Go, and we will wait for you here. I know
that I am never deceived by you, and when I see you I know that the
truth speaks and bids me be worthy of it Go up there," she pointed with
shut eyes at the mountains; "leave me to pray for greater strength. I am
among Italians at this inn; and shall spend money here; the poor people
love it." She smiled a little, showing a glimpse of her old charitable
humour.

Merthyr counselled Laura that in case of evil tidings during his absence
she should reject her feminine ideas of expediency, and believe that she
was speaking to a brave soul firmly rooted in the wisdom of heaven.

"Tell her?--she will die," said Laura, shuddering.

"Get tears from her," Merthyr rejoined; "but hide nothing from her for
a single instant; keep her in daylight. For God's sake, keep her in
daylight."

"It's too sharp a task for me." She repeated that she was incapable of
it.

"Ah," said he, "look at your Italy, how she weeps! and she has cause.
She would die in her grief, if she had no faith for what is to come. I
dare say it is not, save in the hearts of one or two, a conscious faith,
but it's real divine strength; and Alessandra Ammiani has it. Do as I
bid you. I return in two days."

Without understanding him, Laura promised that she would do her utmost
to obey, and he left her muttering to herself as if she were schooling
her lips to speak reluctant words. He started for the mountains with
gladdened limbs, taking a guide, who gave his name as Lorenzo, and
talked of having been 'out' in the previous year. "I am a patriot,
signore! and not only in opposition to my beast of a wife, I assure you:
a downright patriot, I mean." Merthyr was tempted to discharge him at
first, but controlled his English antipathy to babblers, and discovered
him to be a serviceable fellow. Toward nightfall they heard shots up
a rock-strewn combe of the lower slopes; desultory shots indicating
rifle-firing at long range. Darkness made them seek shelter in a
pine-hut; starting from which at dawn, Lorenzo ran beating about like a
dog over the place where the shots had sounded on the foregoing day; he
found a stone spotted with blood. Not far from the stone lay a military
glove that bore brown-crimson finger-ends. They were striking off to
a dairy-but for fresh milk, when out