“Englishmen we can trust,” said Laura, and requested him to step into her carriage.  He glanced round the open space.  Beppo did the same, and beheld the chasseur Jacob Baumwalder Feckelwitz crossing the bridge on foot, but he said nothing.  Wilfrid was on the step of the carriage, for what positive object neither he nor the others knew, when his sister and the doctor joined them.  Captain Gambier was still missing.

“He would have done anything for us,” Vittoria said in Wilfrid’s hearing.

“Tell us what plan you have,” the latter replied fretfully.

She whispered:  “Persuade Adela to make her husband drive out.  The doctor will go too, and Beppo.  They shall take Angelo.  Our carriage will follow empty, and bring Mr. Sedley back.”

Wilfrid cast his eyes up in the air, at the monstrous impudence of the project.  “A storm is coming on,” he suggested, to divert her reading of his grimace; but she was speaking to the doctor, who readily answered her aloud:  “If you are certain of what you say.”  The remark incited Wilfrid to be no subordinate in devotion; handing Adela from the carriage, while the doctor ran up to Mr. Sedley, he drew her away.  Laura and Vittoria watched the motion of their eyes and lips.

“Will he tell her the purpose?” said Laura.

Vittoria smiled nervously:  “He is fibbing.”

Marking the energy expended by Wilfrid in this art, the wiser woman said:  “Be on your guard the next two minutes he gets you alone.”

“You see his devotion.”

“Does he see his compensation?  But he must help us at any hazard.”

Adela broke away from her brother twice, and each time he fixed her to the spot more imperiously.  At last she ran into the hotel; she was crying.  “A bad economy of tears,” said Laura, commenting on the dumb scene, to soothe her savage impatience.  “In another twenty minutes we shall have the city gates locked.”

They heard a window thrown up; Mr. Sedley’s head came out, and peered at the sky.  Wilfrid said to Vittoria:  “I can do nothing beyond what I have done, I fear.”

She thought it was a petition for thanks, but Laura knew better; she said:  “I see Count Lenkenstein on his way to the barracks.”

Wilfrid bowed:  “I may be able to serve you in that quarter.”

He retired:  whereupon Laura inquired how her friend could reasonably suppose that a man would ever endure being thanked in public.

“I shall never understand and never care to understand them,” said Vittoria.

“It is a knowledge that is forced on us, my dear.  May heaven make the minds of our enemies stupid for the next five hours!—­Apropos of what I was saying, women and men are in two hostile camps.  We have a sort of general armistice and everlasting strife of individuals—­Ah!” she clapped hands on her knees, “here comes your doctor; I could fancy I see a pointed light on his head.  Men of science, my Sandra, are always the humanest.”