“I will confide what is now my difficulty here frankly to you,” said the duchess.  “The Lenkensteins are my guests; I thought it better to bring them here.  Angelo Guidascarpi has slain their brother—­a base deed!  It does not affect you in my eyes; you can understand that in theirs it does.  Your being present—­Laura has told me everything—­at the duel, or fight, between that young man and Captain Weisspriess, will make you appear as his accomplice—­at least, to Anna it will; she is the most unreasoning, the most implacable of women.  She returned from the Ultenthal last night, and goes there this morning, which is a sign that Captain Weisspriess lives.  I should be sorry if we lost so good an officer.  As she is going to take Father Bernardus with her, it is possible that the wound is serious.  Do you know you have mystified the worthy man exceedingly?  What tempted you to inform him that your conscience was heavily burdened, at the same time that you refused to confess?”

“Surely he has been deluded about me,” said Vittoria.

“I do but tell you his state of mind in regard to you,” the duchess pursued.  “Under all the circumstances, this is what I have to ask:  you are my Laura’s guest, therefore the guest of my heart.  There is another one here, an Englishman, a Mr. Powys; and also Lieutenant Pierson, whom, naughty rebel that you are, you have been the means of bringing into disgrace; naturally you would wish to see them:  but my request is, that you should keep to these rooms for two or three days:  the Lenkensteins will then be gone.  They can hardly reproach me for retaining an invalid.  If you go down among them, it will be a cruel meeting.”

Vittoria thankfully consented to the arrangement.  They agreed to act in accordance with it.

The signora was a late riser.  The duchess had come on a second visit to Vittoria when Laura joined them, and hearing of the arrangement, spurned the notion of playing craven before the Lenkensteins, who, she said, might think as it pleased them to think, but were never to suppose that there was any fear of confronting them.  “And now, at this very moment, when they have their triumph, and are laughing over Viennese squibs at her, she has an idea of hiding her head—­she hangs out the white flag!  It can’t be.  We go or we stay; but if we stay, the truth is that we are too poor to allow our enemies to think poorly of us.  You, Amalia, are victorious, and you may snap your fingers at opinion.  It is a luxury we cannot afford.  Besides, I wish her to see my sister and make acquaintance with the Austrianized-Italian—­such a wonder as is nowhere to be seen out of the Serabiglione and in the Lenkenstein family.  Marriage is, indeed, a tremendous transformation.  Bianca was once declared to be very like me.”

The brow-beaten duchess replied to the outburst that she had considered it right to propose the scheme for Vittoria’s seclusion on account of the Guidascarpi.