But the object and source of the tremendous frenzy stood like one frozen by the revelation of the magic the secret of which she has studiously mastered.  A nosegay, the last of the tributary shower, discharged from a distance, fell at her feet.  She gave it unconsciously preference over the rest, and picked it up.  A little paper was fixed in the centre.  She opened it with a mechanical hand, thinking there might be patriotic orders enclosed for her.  It was a cheque for one thousand guineas, drawn upon an English banker by the hand of Antonio-Pericles Agriolopoulos; freshly drawn; the ink was only half dried, showing signs of the dictates of a furious impulse.  This dash of solid prose, and its convincing proof that her Art had been successful, restored Vittoria’s composure, though not her early statuesque simplicity.  Rocco gave an inquiring look to see if she would repeat the song.  She shook her head resolutely.  Her opening of the paper in the bouquet had quieted the general ebullition, and the expression of her wish being seen, the chorus was permitted to usurp her place.  Agostino paced up and down the lobby, fearful that he had been guilty of leading her to anticlimax.

He met Antonio-Pericles, and told him so; adding (for now the mask had been seen through, and was useless any further) that he had not had the heart to put back that vision of Camilla’s mother to a later scene, lest an interruption should come which would altogether preclude its being heard.  Pericles affected disdain of any success which Vittoria had yet achieved.  ‘Wait for Act the Third,’ he said; but his irritable anxiousness to hold intercourse with every one, patriot or critic, German, English, or Italian, betrayed what agitation of exultation coursed in his veins.  ‘Aha!’ was his commencement of a greeting; ’was Antonio-Pericles wrong when he told you that he had a prima donna for you to amaze all Christendom, and whose notes were safe and firm as the footing of the angels up and down Jacob’s ladder, my friends?  Aha!’

‘Do you see that your uncle is signalling to you?’ Countess Lena said to Wilfrid.  He answered like a man in a mist, and looked neither at her nor at the General, who, in default of his obedience to gestures, came good-humouredly to the box, bringing Captain Weisspriess with him.

’We ‘re assisting at a pretty show,’ he said.

‘I am in love with her voice,’ said Countess Anna.

‘Ay; if it were only a matter of voices, countess.’

‘I think that these good people require a trouncing,’ said Captain Weisspriess.

‘Lieutenant Pierson is not of your opinion,’ Countess Anna remarked.  Hearing his own name, Wilfrid turned to them with a weariness well acted, but insufficiently to a jealous observation, for his eyes were quick under the carelessly-dropped eyelids, and ranged keenly over the stage while they were affecting to assist his fluent tongue.

Countess Lena levelled her opera-glass at Carlo Ammiani, and then placed the glass in her sister’s hand.  Wilfrid drank deep of bitterness.  ’That is Vittoria’s lover,’ he thought; ’the lover of the Emilia who once loved me!’