am still. I dare say you have guessed
that I have a new journal in my head: the Pallanza Iris is to be
the name of it;--to be printed in three colours, to advocate three
principles, in three styles. The Legitimists, the Moderates, and the
Republicans are to proclaim themselves in its columns in prose, poetry,
and hotch-potch. Once an editor, always an editor. The authorities
suspect that something of the sort is about to be planted, so I can only
make occasional visits here:--therefore, as you will believe,"--Carlo
let his voice fall--"I have good reason to hate them still. They may
cease to persecute me soon."

He insisted upon lighting his mother to her room. Vittoria and Agostino
sat talking of the Chief and the minor events of the war--of Luciano,
Marco, Giulio, and Ugo Corte--till the conviction fastened on them
that Carlo would not return, when Agostino stood up and said, yawning
wearily, "I'll talk further to you, my child, tomorrow."

She begged that it might be now.

"No; to-morrow," said he.

"Now, now!" she reiterated, and brought down a reproof from his
fore-finger.

"The poetic definition of 'now' is that it is a small boat, my daughter,
in which the female heart is constantly pushing out to sea and sinking.
'To-morrow' is an island in the deeps, where grain grows. When I land
you there, I will talk to you."

She knew that he went to join Carlo after he had quitted her.

Agostino was true to his promise next day. He brought her nearer to what
she had to face, though he did not help her vision much. Carlo had gone
before sunrise.

They sat on the terrace above the lake, screened from the sunlight by
thick myrtle bushes. Agostino smoked his loosely-rolled cigarettes, and
Vittoria sipped chocolate and looked upward to the summit of Motterone,
with many thoughts and images in her mind.

He commenced by giving her a love-message from Carlo. "Hold fast to it
that he means it: conduct is never a straight index where the heart's
involved," said the chuckling old man; "or it is not in times like ours.
You have been in the wrong, and your having a good excuse will not help
you before the deciding fates. Woman that you are! did you not think
that because we were beaten we were going to rest for a very long while,
and that your Carlo of yesterday was going to be your Carlo of to-day?"

Vittoria tacitly confessed to it.

"Ay," he pursued, "when you wrote to him in the Val d'Intelvi, you
supposed you had o