e. The offender received his punishment gracefully,
as men will who have been taught that it flatters them. He refused every
challenge. From Carlo Ammiani there came not a word.

It would have been a deadly lull to any fiery temperament engaged in
plotting to destroy a victim, but Anna had the patience of hatred--that
absolute malignity which can measure its exultation rather by the
gathering of its power to harm than by striking. She could lay it aside,
or sink it to the bottom of her emotions, at will, when circumstances
appeared against it. And she could do this without fretful regrets,
without looking to the future. The spirit of her hatred extracted its
own nourishment from things, like an organized creature. When foiled
she became passive, and she enjoyed--forced herself compliantly to
enjoy--her redoubled energy of hatred voluptuously, if ever a turn in
events made wreck of her scheming. She hated Vittoria for many reasons,
all of them vague within her bosom because the source of them was
indefinite and lay in the fact of her having come into collision with an
opposing nature, whose rivalry was no visible rivalry, whose triumph
was an ignorance of scorn--a woman who attracted all men, who scattered
injuries with insolent artlessness, who never appealed to forgiveness,
and was a low-born woman daring to be proud. By repute Anna was
implacable, but she had, and knew she had, the capacity for magnanimity
of a certain kind; and her knowledge of the existence of this
unsuspected fund within her justified in some degree her reckless
efforts to pull her enemy down on her knees. It seemed doubly right that
she should force Vittoria to penitence, as being good for the woman, and
an end that exonerated her own private sins committed to effect it.

Yet she did not look clearly forward to the day of Vittoria's imploring
for mercy. She had too many vexations to endure: she was an insufficient
schemer, and was too frequently thwarted to enjoy that ulterior
prospect. Her only servile instruments were Major Nagen, and Irma, who
came to her from the Villa Ricciardi, hot to do her rival any deadly
injury; but though willing to attempt much, these were apparently able
to perform little more than the menial work of vengeance. Major Nagen
wrote in the name of Weisspriess to Count Ammiani, appointing a second
meeting at Como, and stating that he would be at the villa of the
Duchess of Graatli there. Weisspriess was unsuspectingly take