“No; the heart is eaten out of you both by excitement,” said the duchess.

Her tender parting, “Love me,” in the ear of Vittoria, melted one heart of the two.

Count Serabiglione continued to be buoyed up by his own and his daughter’s recent display of a superior intellectual dexterity until the carriage was at the door and Laura presented her cheek to him.  He said, “You will know me a wise man when I am off the table.”  His gesticulations expressed “Ruin, headlong ruin!” He asked her how she could expect him to be for ever repairing her follies.  He was going to Vienna; how could he dare to mention her name there?  Not even in a trifle would she consent to be subordinate to authority.  Laura checked her replies—­the surrendering, of a noble Italian life to the Austrians was such a trifle!  She begged only that a poor wanderer might depart with a father’s blessing.  The count refused to give it; he waved her off in a fury of reproof; and so got smoothly over the fatal moment when money, or the promise of money, is commonly extracted from parental sources, as Laura explained his odd behaviour to her companion.  The carriage-door being closed, he regained his courtly composure; his fury was displaced by a chiding finger, which he presently kissed.  Father.  Bernardus was on the steps beside the duchess, and his blessing had not been withheld from Vittoria, though he half confessed to her that she was a mystery in his mind, and would always be one.

“He can understand robust hostility,” Laura said, when Vittoria recalled the look of his benevolent forehead and drooping eyelids; “but robust ductility does astonish him.  He has not meddled with me; yet I am the one of the two who would be fair prey for an enterprising spiritual father, as the destined roan of heaven will find out some day.”

She bent and smote her lap.  “How little they know us, my darling!  They take fever for strength, and calmness for submission.  Here is the world before us, and I feel that such a man, were he to pounce on me now, might snap me up and lock me in a praying-box with small difficulty.  And I am the inveterate rebel!  What is it nourishes you and keeps you always aiming straight when you are alone?  Once in Turin, I shall feel that I am myself.  Out of Italy I have a terrible craving for peace.  It seems here as if I must lean down to him, my beloved, who has left me.”

Vittoria was in alarm lest Wilfrid should accost her while she drove from gate to gate of the city.  They passed under the archway of the gate leading up to Schloss Tyrol, and along the road bordered by vines.  An old peasant woman stopped them with the signal of a letter in her hand.  “Here it is,” said Laura, and Vittoria could not help smiling at her shrewd anticipation of it.

“May I follow?”

Nothing more than that was written.

But the bearer of the missive had been provided with a lead pencil to obtain the immediate reply.