aying aloud, "You mean, that
she is going to her marriage." Laura turned her face to Merthyr. He had
striven to rise on his elbow, and had dropped flat in his helplessness.
Big tears were rolling down his cheeks. His articulation failed him,
beyond a reiterated "No, no," pitiful to hear, and he broke into
childish sobs. Georgiana hurried Laura from the room. By-and-by the
doctor was promptly summoned, and it was Georgiana herself, miserably
humbled, who obtained Vittoria's sworn consent to keep the life in
Merthyr by lingering yet awhile.

Meantime Luigi brought a letter from Pallanza in Carlo's handwriting.
This was the burden of it:

"I am here, and you are absent. Hasten!"

CHAPTER XXXVI

A FRESH ENTANGLEMENT

The Lenkenstein ladies returned to Milan proudly in the path of the
army which they had followed along the city walls on the black March
midnight. The ladies of the Austrian aristocracy generally had to be
exiles from Vienna, and were glad to flock together even in an alien
city. Anna and Lena were aware of Vittoria's residence in Milan, through
the interchange of visits between the Countess of Lenkenstein and her
sister Signora Piaveni. They heard also of Vittoria's prospective and
approaching marriage to Count Ammiani. The Duchess of Graatli, who had
forborne a visit to her unhappy friends, lest her Austrian face should
wound their sensitiveness, was in company with the Lenkensteins one day,
when Irma di Karski called on them. Irma had come from Lago
Maggiore, where she had left her patron, as she was pleased to term
Antonio-Pericles. She was full of chatter of that most worthy man's
deplorable experiences of Vittoria's behaviour to him during the war,
and of many things besides. According to her account, Vittoria had
enticed him from place to place with promises that the next day, and the
next day, and the day after, she would be ready to keep her engagement
to go to London, and at last she had given him the slip and left him to
be plucked like a pullet by a horde of volunteer banditti, out of whose
hands Antonio-Pericles-"one of our richest millionaires in Europe,
certainly our richest amateur," said Irma--escaped in fit outward
condition for the garden of Eden.

Count Karl was lying on the sofa, and went into endless invalid's
laughter at the picture presented by Irma of the 'wild man' wanderings
of poor infatuated Pericles, which was exaggerated, though not
intentionally, for Irma repeated t