The countess raised her face and drooped her hands from the
wrists, exclaiming, "If I have lately omitted one prayer, enlighten me,
blessed heaven! I am blind; I cannot see for my son; I am quite blind. I
do not love the woman; therefore I doubt myself. You, my daughter, tell
me your thought of her, tell me what you think. Young eyes observe;
young heads are sometimes shrewd in guessing."

Vittoria said, after a pause, "I will believe her to be true, if she
supports the king." It was hardly truthful speaking on her part.

"How can Carlo have been persuaded!" the countess sighed.

"By me?" Victoria asked herself, and for a moment she was exulting.

She spoke from that emotion when it had ceased to animate her.

"Carlo was angry with the king. He echoed Agostino, but Agostino does
not sting as he did, and Carlo cannot avoid seeing what the king has
sacrificed. Perhaps the Countess d'Isorella has shown him promises of
fresh aid in the king's handwriting. Suffering has made Carlo Alberto
one with the Republicans, if he had other ambitions once. And Carlo
dedicates his blood to Lombardy: he does rightly. Dear countess--my
mother! I have made him wait for me; I will be patient in waiting for
him. I know that Countess d'Isorella is intimate with the king. There
is a man named Barto Rizzo, who thinks me a guilty traitress, and she
is making use of this man. That must be her reason for prohibiting
the marriage. She cannot be false if she is capable of uniting extreme
revolutionary agents and the king in one plot, I think; I do not know."
Vittoria concluded her perfect expression of confidence with this
atoning doubtfulness.

Countess Ammiani obtained her consent that she would not quit her side.

After Violetta had gone, Carlo, though he shunned secret interviews,
addressed his betrothed as one who was not strange to his occupation
and the trial his heart was undergoing. She could not doubt that she was
beloved, in spite of the colourlessness and tonelessness of a love that
appealed to her intellect. He showed her a letter he had received from
Laura, laughing at its abuse of Countess d'Isorella, and the sarcasms
levelled at himself.

In this letter Laura said that she was engaged in something besides
nursing.

Carlo pointed his finger to the sentence, and remarked, "I must have
your promise--a word from you is enough--that you will not meddle with
any intrigue."

Vittoria gave the promise, half trusting it to bring t