“You see that,” Anna remarked to her sister.

“I should have despised him if he had acted indifference,” replied Lena.

She would have suspected him—­that was what her heart meant; the artful show of indifference had deceived her once.  The anger within her drew its springs much more fully from his refusal to respond to her affection, when she had in a fit of feminine weakness abased herself before him on the night of the Milanese revolt, than from the recollection of their days together in Meran.  She had nothing of her sister’s unforgivingness.  And she was besides keenly curious to discover the nature of the charm Vittoria threw on him, and not on him solely.  Vittoria left Wilfrid to better chances than she supposed.  “Continue fighting with your army,” she said, when they parted.  The deeper shade which traversed his features told her that, if she pleased, her sway might still be active; but she had no emotion to spare for sentimental regrets.  She asked herself whether a woman who has cast her lot in scenes of strife does not lose much of her womanhood and something of her truth; and while her imagination remained depressed, her answer was sad.  In that mood she pitied Wilfrid with a reckless sense of her inability to repay him for the harm she had done him.  The tragedies written in fresh blood all about her, together with that ever-present image of the fate of Italy hanging in the balance, drew her away from personal reflections.  She felt as one in a war-chariot, who has not time to cast more than a glance on the fallen.  At the place where the ferry is, she was rejoiced by hearing positive news of the proximity of the Royal army.  There were none to tell her that Charles Albert had here made his worst move by leaving Vicenza to the operations of the enemy, that he might become master of a point worthless when Vicenza fell into the enemy’s hands.  The old Austrian Field-Marshal had eluded him at Mantua on that very night when Vittoria had seen his troops in motion.  The daring Austrian flank-march on Vicenza, behind the fortresses of the Quadrilateral, was the capital stroke of the campaign.  But the presence of a Piedmontese vanguard at Rivoli flushed the Adige with confidence, and Vittoria went on her way sharing the people’s delight.  She reached Brescia to hear that Vicenza had fallen.  The city was like a landscape smitten black by the thunder-cloud.  Vittoria found Countess Ammiani at her husband’s tomb, stiff, colourless, lifeless as a monument attached to the tomb.

CHAPTER XXXV

CLOSE OF THE LOMBARD CAMPAIGN—­VITTORIA’S PERPLEXITY