Vittoria sat up and tumbled questions out headlong, pressing her eyes and gathering her senses; she shook with a few convulsions, but shed no tears.  It was rather the discomfort of their position than any vestige of alarm which prompted Giacinta to project her head and interrogate the coachman and chasseur.  She drew back, saying, ’Holy Virgin! they are Germans.  We are to stop in half-an-hour.’  With that she put her hands to use in arranging and smoothing Vittoria’s hair and dress—­the dress of Camilla—­of which triumphant heroine Vittoria felt herself an odd little ghost now.  She changed her seat that she might look back on Milan.  A letter was spied fastened with a pin to one of the cushions.  She opened it, and read in pencil writing: 

’Go quietly.  You have done all that you could do for good or for ill.  The carriage will take you to a safe place, where you will soon see your friends and hear the news.  Wait till you reach Meran.  You will see a friend from England.  Avoid the lion’s jaw a second time.  Here you compromise everybody.  Submit, or your friends will take you for a mad girl.  Be satisfied.  It is an Austrian who rescues you.  Think yourself no longer appointed to put match to powder.  Drown yourself if a second frenzy comes.  I feel I could still love your body if the obstinate soul were out of it.  You know who it is that writes.  I might sign “Michiella” to this:  I have a sympathy with her anger at the provoking Camilla.  Addio!  From La Scala.’

The lines read as if Laura were uttering them.  Wrapping her cloak across the silken opera garb, Vittoria leaned back passively until the carriage stopped at a village inn, where Giacinta made speedy arrangements to satisfy as far as possible her mistress’s queer predilection for bathing her whole person daily in cold water.  The household service of the inn recovered from the effort to assist her sufficiently to produce hot coffee and sweet bread, and new green-streaked stracchino, the cheese of the district, which was the morning meal of the fugitives.  Giacinta, who had never been so thirsty in her life, became intemperately refreshed, and was seized by the fatal desire to do something:  to do what she could not tell; but chancing to see that her mistress had silken slippers on her feet, she protested loudly that stouter foot-gear should be obtained for her, and ran out to circulate inquiries concerning a shoemaker who might have a pair of country overshoes for sale.  She returned to say that the coachman and his comrade, the German chasseur, were drinking and watering their horses, and were not going to start until after a rest of two hours, and that she proposed to walk to a small Bergamasc town within a couple of miles of the village, where the shoes could be obtained, and perhaps a stuff to replace the silken dress.  Receiving consent, Giacinta whispered, ’A man outside wishes to speak to you, signorina.  Don’t be frightened.  He pounced on me at the end of the village, and had as little breath to speak as a boy in love.  He was behind us all last night on the carriage.  He mentioned you by name.  He is quite commonly dressed, but he’s a gallant gentleman, and exactly like our Signor Carlo.  My dearest lady, he’ll be company for you while I am absent.  May I beckon him to come into the room?’