because she doesn't
carry earrings, when her ears have never been pierced! I am lost! Yes,
you may say, lookup! I am only a poor singer, and he can ruin me. Oh!
Countess d'Isorella, oh! what a fearful punishment. If Countess Anna
should betray Count Ammiani to-night, nothing, nothing, will save me.
I will confess. Let us both be beforehand with her--or you, it does not
matter for a noble lady."

"Hush!" said Violetta. "What dreadful fool is this I sit with? You may
have done what you think of doing already."

She walked to the staircase door, and to that of the suite. An
honourable sentiment, conjoined to the knowledge that he had heard
sufficient, induced Wilfrid to pass on into the sleeping apartment a
moment or so before Violetta took this precaution. The potent liquor of
Pericles had deprived him of consecutive ideas; he sat nursing a thunder
in his head, imagining it to be profound thought, till Pericles flung
the door open. Violetta and Irma had departed. "Behold! I have it; ze
address of your rogue Barto Rizzo," said Pericles, in the manner of one
whose triumph is absolutely due to his own shrewdness. "Are two women a
match for me? Now, my friend, you shall see. Barto Rizzo is too clever
for zis government, which cannot catch him. I catch him, and I teach him
he may touch politics--it is not for him to touch Art. What! to hound
men to interrupt her while she sings in public places? What next! But
I knew my Countess d'Isorella could help me, and so I sent for her to
confront Irma, and dare to say she knew not Barto's dwelling--and why? I
will tell you a secret. A long-flattered woman, my friend, she has had,
you will think, enough of it; no! she is like avarice. If it is worship
of swine, she cannot refuse it. Barto Rizzo worships her; so it is a
deduction--she knows his abode--I act upon that, and I arrive at my end.
I now send him to ze devil."

Barto Rizzo, after having evaded the polizia of the city during a
three months' steady chase, was effectually captured on the doorstep of
Vittoria's house in the Corso Francesco, by gendarmes whom Pericles had
set on his track. A day later Vittoria was stabbed at about the same
hour, on the same spot. A woman dealt the blow. Vittoria was returning
from an afternoon drive with Laura Piaveni and the children. She saw a
woman seated on the steps as beggarwomen sit, face in lap. Anxious to
shield her from the lacquey, she sent the two little ones up to her with
small bit