‘You never trust me,’ she whimpered from shaken nerves.

He called her, ‘Brave little woman! rare girl!’

‘But you never trust me!’

‘Do I not lay traps to praise you?’

‘You make a woman try to deceive you.’  If she could!  If only she could!’

Ammiani was up with them.

‘You are Barto Rizzo,’ he spoke, half leaning over the man in his impetuosity.

Barto stole a defensive rearward step.  The thin light of dawn had in a moment divided the extreme starry darkness, and Ammiani, who knew his face, had not to ask a second time.  It was scored by a recent sword-cut.  He glanced at the woman:  saw that she was handsome.  It was enough; he knew she must be Barto’s wife, and, if not more cunning than Barto, his accomplice, his instrument, his slave.

’Five minutes ago I would have sworn you were a traitress he said to her.

She was expressionless, as if she had heard nothing; which fact, considering that she was very handsome, seemed remarkable to the young man.  Youth will not believe that stupidity and beauty can go together.

‘She is the favourite pupil of Bartolommeo Rizzo, Signor Carlo Ammiani,’ quoth Barto, having quite regained his composure.  ’She is my pretty puppet-patriot.  I am not in the habit of exhibiting her; but since you see her, there she is.’

Barto had fallen into the Southern habit of assuming ease in quasi-rhetorical sentences, but with wary eyes over them.  The peculiar, contracting, owl-like twinkle defied Ammiani’s efforts to penetrate his look; so he took counsel of his anger, and spoke bluntly.

‘She does your work?’

‘Much of it, Signor Carlo:  as the bullet does the work of the rifle.’

’Beast! was it your wife who pinned the butterfly to the Signorina Vittoria’s dress?’

’Signor Carlo Ammiani, you are the son of Paolo, the General:  you call me beast?  I have dandled you in my arms, my little lad, while the bands played “There’s yet a heart in Italy!” Do you remember it?’ Barto sang out half-a-dozen bars.  ’You call me beast?  I’m the one man in Milan who can sing you that.’

‘Beast or man, devil or whatever you are!’ cried Ammiani, feeling nevertheless oddly unnerved, ’you have committed a shameful offence:  you, or the woman, your wife, who serves you, as I see.  You have thwarted the best of plots; you have dared to act in defiance of your Chief—­’

‘Eyes to him!’ Barto interposed, touching over his eyeballs.

’And you have thrown your accursed stupid suspicions on the Signorina Vittoria.  You are a mad fool.  If I had the power, I would order you to be shot at five this morning; and that ’s the last rising of the light you should behold.  Why did you do it?  Don’t turn your hellish eyes in upon one another, but answer at once!  Why did you do it?’