“If I could hit on a plan,” said Wilfrid, figuring as though he had a diorama of impossible schemes revolving before his eyes.

“I could believe in the actual whispering of an angel if you did.  It was to guard me that Angelo put himself in peril.”

“Then,” said Wilfrid, “I am his debtor.  I owe him as much as my life is worth.”

“Think, think,” she urged; and promised affection, devotion, veneration, vague things, that were too like his own sentiments to prompt him pointedly.  Yet he so pledged himself to her by word, and prepared his own mind to conceive the act of service, that (as he did not reflect) circumstance might at any moment plunge him into a gulf.  Conduct of this sort is a challenge sure to be answered.

One morning Vittoria was gladdened by a letter from Rocco Ricci, who had fled to Turin.  He told her that the king had promised to give her a warm welcome in his capital, where her name was famous.  She consulted with Laura, and they resolved to go as soon as Angelo could stand on his feet.  Turin was cold—­Italy, but it was Italy; and from Turin the Italian army was to flow, like the Mincio from the Garda lake.  “And there, too, is a stage,” Vittoria thought, in a suddenly revived thirst for the stage and a field for work.  She determined to run down to Meran and see Angelo.  Laura walked a little way with her, till Wilfrid, alert for these occasions, joined them.  On the commencement of the zig-zag below, there were soldiers, the sight of whom was not confusing.  Military messengers frequently came up to the castle where Count Lenkenstein, assisted by Count Serabiglione, examined their depositions, the Italian in the manner of a winding lawyer, the German of a gruff judge.  Half-way down the zig-zag Vittoria cast a preconcerted signal back to Laura.  The soldiers had a pair of prisoners between their ranks; Vittoria recognized the men who had carried Captain Weisspriess from the ground where the duel was fought.  A quick divination told her that they held Angelo’s life on their tongues.  They must have found him in the mountain-pass while hurrying to their homes, and it was they who had led him to Meran.  On the Passeyr bridge, she turned and said to Wilfrid, “Help me now.  Send instantly the doctor in a carriage to the place where he is lying.”

Wilfrid was intent on her flushed beauty and the half-compressed quiver of her lip.

She quitted him and hurried to Angelo.  Her joy broke out in a cry of thankfulness at sight of Angelo; he had risen from his bed; he could stand, and he smiled.

“That Jacopo is just now the nearest link to me,” he said, when she related her having seen the two men guarded by soldiers; he felt helpless, and spoke in resignation.  She followed his eye about the room till it rested on the stilet.  This she handed to him.  “If they think of having me alive!” he said softly.  The Italian and his wife who had given him shelter