Further, the signora stated that Carlo might have to remain in prison.  She made no attempt to give dark or fair colour to the misery of the situation; telling Vittoria to lie on her bed and sleep, if sleep could be persuaded to visit her, she went out to consult with the duchess.  Vittoria lay like a dead body on the bed, counting the throbs of her heart.  It helped her to fall into a state of insensibility.  When she awoke, the room was dark; she felt that some one had put a silken cushion across her limbs.  The noise of a storm traversing the vale rang through the castle, and in the desolation of her soul, that stealthy act of kindness wrought in her till she almost fashioned a vow upon her lips that she would leave the world to toss its wrecks, and dedicate her life to God.

For, O heaven! of what avail is human effort?  She thought of the Chief, whose life was stainless, but who stood proscribed because his aim was too high to be attained within compass of a mortal’s years.  His error seemed that he had ever aimed at all.  He seemed less wise than the old priest of the oratory.  She could not disentangle him from her own profound humiliation and sense of fallen power.  Her lover’s imprisonment accused her of some monstrous culpability, which she felt unrepentingly, not as we feel a truth, but as we submit to a terrible force of pressure.

The morning light made her realize Carlo’s fate, to whom it would penetrate through a hideous barred loophole—­a defaced and dreadful beam.  She asked herself why she had fled from Milan.  It must have been some cowardly instinct that had prompted her to fly.  “Coward, coward! thing of vanity! you, a mere woman!” she cried out, and succeeded in despising herself sufficiently to think it possible that she had deserved to forfeit her lover’s esteem.

It was still early when the duchess’s maid came to her, bringing word that her mistress would be glad to visit her.  From the duchess Vittoria heard of the charge against Angelo.  Respecting Captain Weisspriess, Amalia said that she had perceived his object in wishing to bring the great cantatrice to the castle; and that it was a well-devised audacious scheme to subdue Countess Anna:—­“We Austrians also can be jealous.  The difference between us is, that it makes us tender, and you Italians savage.”  She asked pointedly for an affirmative, that Vittoria was glad to reply with, when she said:  “Captain Weisspriess was perfectly respectful to you?” She spoke comforting words of Carlo Ammiani, whom she hoped to see released as soon as the excitement had subsided.  The chief comfort she gave was by saying that he had been originally arrested in mistake for his cousin Angelo.