ning the night of the famous
Fifteenth at La Scala. He was an amateur, and spoke with enthusiasm of
the reports of the new prima donna. The duchess perceived that he was
asking for an introduction to the heroine of the night, and graciously
said that perhaps that very prima donna would make amends, to him for
his absence on the occasion. Vittoria checked a movement of revolt in
her frame. She cast an involuntary look at Wilfrid. "Now it begins,"
she thought, and went to the piano: she had previously refused to
sing. Wilfrid had to bend his head over his betrothed and listen to her
whisperings. He did so, carelessly swaying his hand to the measure of
the aria, with an increasing bitter comparison of the two voices.
Lena persisted in talking; she was indignant at his abandonment of
the journey to Venice; she reproached him as feeble, inconsiderate,
indifferent. Then for an instant she would pause to hear the voice, and
renew her assault. "We ought to be thankful that she is not singing
a song of death and destruction to us! The archduchess is coming to
Venice. If you are presented to her and please her, and get the writs
of naturalization prepared, you will be one of us completely, and your
fortune is made. If you stay here--why should you stay? It is nothing
but your uncle's caprice. I am too angry to care for music. If you stay,
you will earn my contempt. I will not be buried another week in such a
place. I am tired of weeping. We all go to Venice: Captain Weisspriess
follows us. We are to have endless Balls, an opera, a Court there--with
whom am I to dance, pray, when I am out of mourning? Am I to sit and
govern my feet under a chair, and gaze like an imbecile nun? It is too
preposterous. I am betrothed to you; I wish, I wish to behave like a
betrothed. The archduchess herself will laugh to see me chained to a
chair. I shall have to reply a thousand times to 'Where is he?' What can
I answer? 'Wouldn't come,' will be the only true reply."

During this tirade, Vittoria was singing one of her old songs, well
known to Wilfrid, which brought the vision of a foaming weir, and
moonlight between the branches of a great cedar-tree, and the lost love
of his heart sitting by his side in the noising stillness. He was sure
that she could be singing it for no one but for him. The leap taken by
his spirit from this time to that, was shorter than from the past back
to the present.

"You do not applaud," said Lena, when the song had c