Anna said to the duchess:  “I hope your little birds are all well this morning.”

“Come to them presently with me and let our ears be tickled,” the duchess laughed in answer; and the spiked dialogue broke, not to revive.

The duchess had observed the constant direction of Anna’s eyes upon Vittoria during the repast, and looked an interrogation at Anna, who replied to it firmly.  “I must be present,” the duchess whispered.  She drew Vittoria away by the hand, telling Merthyr Powys that it was unkind to him, but that he should be permitted to claim his fair friend from noon to the dinner-bell.

Laura and Bianca were discussing the same subject as the one for which Anna desired an interview with Vittoria.  It was to know the conditions and cause of the duel between Angelo Guidascarpi and Captain Weisspriess, and whither Angelo had fled.  “In other words, you cry for vengeance under the name of justice,” Laura phrased it, and put up a prayer for Angelo’s escape.

The countess rebuked her.  “It is men like Angelo who are a scandal to Italy.”

“Proclaimed so; but by what title are they judged?” Laura retorted.  “I have heard that his duel with Count Paul was fair, and that the grounds for it were just.  Deplore it; but to condemn an Italian gentleman without hearing his personal vindication, is infamous; nay, it is Austrian.  I know next to nothing of the story.  Countess Ammiani has assured me that the brothers have a clear defence—­not from your Vienna point of view:  Italy and Vienna are different sides of the shield.”

Vittoria spoke most humbly before Anna; her sole irritating remark was, that even if she were aware of the direction of Angelo’s flight, she would not betray him.

The duchess did her utmost to induce her to see that he was a criminal, outlawed from common charity.  “These Italians are really like the Jews,” she said to Anna; “they appear to me to hold together by a bond of race:  you cannot get them to understand that any act can be infamous when one of their blood is guilty of it.”

Anna thought gloomily:  “Then, why do you ally yourself to them?”

The duchess, with Anna, Lena, and Wilfrid, drove to the Ultenthal.  Vittoria and Merthyr had a long afternoon of companionship.  She had been shyer in meeting him than in meeting Wilfrid, whom she had once loved.  The tie between herself and Wilfrid was broken; but Merthyr had remained true to his passionless affection, which ennobled him to her so that her heart fluttered, though she was heavily depressed.  He relieved her by letting her perceive that Carlo Ammiani’s merits were not unknown to him.  Merthyr smiled at Carlo for abjuring his patrician birth.  He said:  “Count Ammiani will be cured in time of those little roughnesses of his adopted Republicanism.  You must help to cure him.  Women are never so foolish as men in these things.”