obligation;' 'Knight--my what-you-will and my round-the-corner
wishes.' Then, if you find that queen may be gratified without
endangering king, and so forth, why, you may follow your inclinations;
and if not, not. My Carlo, you are either enviably cool, or you are an
enviable hypocrite."

"The matter is not quite so easily settled as that," said Carlo.

On the whole, though against her preconception, Laura thought him an
honest lover, and not the player of a double game. She saw that Vittoria
should have been with him in the critical hour of defeat, when his
passions were down, and heaven knows what weakness of our common
manhood, that was partly pride, partly love-craving, made his nature
waxen to every impression; a season, as Laura knew, when the mistress of
a loyal lover should not withhold herself from him. A nature tender like
Carlo's, and he bearing an enamoured heart, could not, as Luciano Romara
had done, pass instantly from defeat to drill. And vain as Carlo was
(the vanity being most intricate and subtle, like a nervous fluid), he
was very open to the belief that he could diplomatize as well as fight,
and lead a movement yet better than follow it. Even so the signora tried
to read his case.

They were all, excepting Countess Ammiani ("who will never, I fear, do
me this honour," Violetta wrote, and the countess said, "Never," and
quoted a proverb), about to pass three or four days at the villa of
Countess d'Isorella. Before they set out, Vittoria received a portentous
envelope containing a long scroll, that was headed "YOUR CRIMES,"
and detailing a lest of her offences against the country, from the
revelation of the plot in her first letter to Wilfrid, to services
rendered to the enemy during the war, up to the departure of Charles
Albert out of forsaken Milan.

"B. R." was the undisguised signature at the end of the scroll.

Things of this description restored her old war-spirit to Vittoria.
She handed the scroll to Laura; Laura, in great alarm, passed it on to
Carlo. He sent for Angelo Guidascarpi in haste, for Carlo read it as
an ante-dated justificatory document to some mischievous design, and
he desired that hands as sure as his own, and yet more vigilant eyes,
should keep watch over his betrothed.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

VIOLETTA D'ISORELLA

The villa inhabited by Countess d'Isorella was on the water's
edge, within clear view of the projecting Villa Ricciardi, in that
darkly-wooded region of t