way with a
spider-thread. It was against all calculation. But, observe: there were
exterior agencies at work: a stout wind blew. The ordinary reckoning
is based on calms. Without the operation of disturbing elements, the
spider-thread would have gently detained the gossamer."

"Is that meant for my son?" Countess Ammiani asked slowly, with
incredulous emphasis.

Agostino and Laura, laughing in their hearts at the mother's mysterious
veneration for Carlo, had to explain that 'gossamer' was a poetic,
generic term, to embrace the lighter qualities of masculine youth.

A woman's figure passed swiftly by the window, which led Laura to
suppose that the couple outside had parted. She ran forth, calling to
one of them, but they came hand in hand, declaring that they had seen
neither woman nor man. "And I am happy," Vittoria whispered. She looked
happy, pale though she was.

"It is only my dreadful longing for rest which makes me pale," she said
to Laura, when they were alone. "Carlo has proved to me that he is wiser
than I am."

"A proof that you love Carlo, perhaps," Laura rejoined.

"Dearest, he speaks more gently of the king."

"It may be cunning, or it may be carelessness."

"Will nothing satisfy you, wilful sceptic? He is quite alive to the
Countess d'Isorella's character. He told me how she dazzled him once."

"Not how she has entangled him now?"

"It is not true. He told me what I should like to dream over without
talking any more to anybody. Ah, what a delight! to have known him, as
you did, when he was a boy. Can one who knew him then mean harm to him?
I am not capable of imagining it. No; he will not abandon poor broken
Lombardy, and he is right; and it is my duty to sit and wait. No shadow
shall come between us. He has said it, and I have said it. We have but
one thing to fear, which is contemptible to fear; so I am at peace."

"Love-sick," was Laura's mental comment. Yet when Carlo explained his
position to her next day, she was milder in her condemnation of him, and
even admitted that a man must be guided by such brains as he possesses.
He had conceived that his mother had a right to claim one month from
him at the close of the war; he said this reddening. Laura nodded. He
confessed that he was irritated when he met the Countess d'Isorella,
with whom, to his astonishment, he found Barto Rizzo. She had picked him
up, weak from a paroxysm, on the high-road to Milan. "And she tamed the
brute," said Carlo,