irl should see, the brothers proposed to
the nobleman her betrothed to break the treaty; but he was of a mind to
hurry on the marriage, and recollecting now that she was but a woman,
the brothers fixed a day for her espousals, tenderly, without reproach.
She had the choice of taking the vows or surrendering her hand. Her old
nurse prayed for the day of her espousals to come with a quicker step.

One night she surprised Count Paul Lenkenstein at Clelia's window.
Rinaldo was in the garden below. He moved to the shadow of a cypress,
and was seen moving by the old nurse. The lover took the single kiss he
had come for, was led through the chamber, and passed unchallenged
into the street. Clelia sat between locked doors and darkened windows,
feeling colder to the brothers she had been reared with than to all
other men upon the earth. They sent for her after a lapse of hours. Her
old nurse was kneeling at their feet. Rinaldo asked for the name of her
lover. She answered with it. Angelo said, "It will be better for you
to die: but if you cannot do so easy a thing as that, prepare widow's
garments." They forced her to write three words to Count Paul, calling
him to her window at midnight. Rinaldo fetched a priest: Angelo laid out
two swords. An hour before the midnight, Clelia's old nurse raised the
house with her cries. Clelia was stretched dead in her chamber. The
brothers kissed her in turn, and sat, one at her head, one at her feet.
At midnight her lover stood among them. He was gravely saluted, and
bidden to look upon the dead body. Angelo said to him, "Had she lived
you should have wedded her hand. She is gone of her own free choice, and
one of us follows her." With the sweat of anguish on his forehead,
Count Paul drew sword. The window was barred; six male domestics of the
household held high lights in the chamber; the priest knelt beside one
corpse, awaiting the other.

Vittoria's imagination could not go beyond that scene, but she looked
out on the brother of the slain youth with great pity, and with a
strange curiosity. The example given by Clelia of the possible love
of an Italian girl for the white uniform, set her thinking whether so
monstrous a fact could ever be doubled in this world. "Could it happen
to me?" she asked herself, and smiled, as she half-fashioned the words
on her lips, "It is a pretty uniform."

Her reverie was broken by a hiss of "Traitress!" from the woman
opposite.

She coloured guiltily, tri