Barto’s wife went into his huge arm, and submissively lifted her face.  He kissed her like a barbaric king, laughing as from wine.

Wilfrid smothered his head from his incarnate thunder.  He was unnoticed by Barto.  Presently a silence told him that he was left to himself.  An idea possessed him that the triumph of the Italians meant the release of Ammiani, and his release the loss of Vittoria for ever.  Since her graceless return of his devotion to her in Meran, something like a passion—­arising from the sole spring by which he could be excited to conceive a passion—­had filled his heart.  He was one of those who delight to dally with gentleness and faith, as with things that are their heritage; but the mere suspicion of coquettry and indifference plunged him into a fury of jealous wrathfulness, and tossed so desireable an image of beauty before him that his mad thirst to embrace it seemed love.  By our manner of loving we are known.  He thought it no meanness to escape and cause a warning to be conveyed to the Government that there was another attempt brewing for the rescue of Count Ammiani.  Acting forthwith on the hot impulse, he seized the lamp.  The door was unlocked.  Luckier than Luigi had been, he found a ladder outside, and a square opening through which he crawled; continuing to ascend along close passages and up narrow flights of stairs, that appeared to him to be fashioned to avoid the rooms of the house.  At last he pushed a door, and found himself in an armoury, among stands of muskets, swords, bayonets, cartouche-boxes, and, most singular of all, though he observed them last, small brass pieces of cannon, shining with polish.  Shot was piled in pyramids beneath their mouths.  He examined the guns admiringly.  There were rows of daggers along shelves; some in sheath, others bare; one that had been hastily wiped showed a smear of ropy blood.  He stood debating whether he should seize a sword for his protection.  In the act of trying its temper on the floor, the sword-hilt was knocked from his hand, and he felt a coil of arms around him.  He was in the imprisoning embrace of Barto Rizzo’s wife.  His first, and perhaps natural, impression accused her of a violent display of an eccentric passion for his manly charms; and the tighter she locked him, the more reasonably was he held to suppose it; but as, while stamping on the floor, she offered nothing to his eyes save the yellow poll of her neck, and hung neither panting nor speaking, he became undeceived.  His struggles were preposterous; his lively sense of ridicule speedily stopped them.  He remained passive, from time to time desperately adjuring his living prison to let him loose, or to conduct him whither he had come; but the inexorable coil kept fast—­how long there was no guessing—­till he could have roared out tears of rage, and that is extremity for an Englishman.  Rinaldo arrived in his aid; but the woman still clung to him.  He was freed only by the voice of Barto Rizzo, who marched him back.  Rinaldo subsequently told him that his discovery of the armoury necessitated his confinement.