“Bianca, you expressed a wish to give a salute to my eldest daughter,” said Laura.

The Countess of Lenkenstein turned her head.  “Have I done so?”

“It is my duty to introduce her,” interposed the duchess, and conducted the ceremony with a show of its embracing these ladies, neither one of whom changed her cold gaze.

Careful that no pause should follow, she commenced chatting to the ladies and gentlemen alternately, keeping Vittoria under her peculiar charge.  Merthyr alone seconded her efforts to weave the web of converse, which is an armistice if not a treaty on these occasions.

“Have you any fresh caricatures from Vienna?” Laura continued to address her sister.

“None have reached me,” said the neutral countess.

“Have they finished laughing?”

“I cannot tell.”

“At any rate, we sing still,” Laura smiled to Vittoria.  “You shall hear us after breakfast.  I regret excessively that you were not in Milan on the Fifteenth.  We will make amends to you as much as possible.  You shall hear us after breakfast.  You will sing to please my sister, Sandra mia, will you not?”

Vittoria shook her head.  Like those who have become passive, she read faces—­the duchess’s imploring looks thrown from time to time to the Lenkenstein ladies, Wilfrid’s oppressed forehead, the resolute neutrality of the countess—­and she was not only incapable of seconding Laura’s aggressive war, but shrank from the involvement and sickened at the indelicacy.  Anna’s eyes were fixed on her and filled her with dread lest she should be resolving to demand a private interview.

“You refuse to sing?” said Laura; and under her breath, “When I bid you not, you insist!”

“Can she possibly sing before she grows accustomed to the air of the place?” said the duchess.

Merthyr gravely prescribed a week’s diet on grapes antecedent to the issuing of a note.  “Have you never heard what a sustained grape-diet will do for the bullfinches?”

“Never,” exclaimed the duchess.  “Is that the secret of their German education?”

“Apparently, for we cannot raise them to the same pitch of perfection in England.”

“I will try it upon mine.  Every morning they shall have two big bunches.”

“Fresh plucked, and with the first sunlight on them.  Be careful of the rules.”

Wilfrid remarked, “To make them exhibit the results, you withdraw the benefit suddenly, of course?”

“We imitate the general run of Fortune’s gifts as much as we can,” said Merthyr.

“That is the training for little shrill parrots:  we have none in Italy,” Laura sighed, mock dolefully; “I fear the system would fail among us.”

“It certainly would not build Como villas,” said Lena.

Laura cast sharp eyes on her pretty face.

“It is adapted for caged voices that are required to chirrup to tickle the ears of boors.”