“Carlo was angry with the king.  He echoed Agostino, but Agostino does not sting as he did, and Carlo cannot avoid seeing what the king has sacrificed.  Perhaps the Countess d’Isorella has shown him promises of fresh aid in the king’s handwriting.  Suffering has made Carlo Alberto one with the Republicans, if he had other ambitions once.  And Carlo dedicates his blood to Lombardy:  he does rightly.  Dear countess—­my mother!  I have made him wait for me; I will be patient in waiting for him.  I know that Countess d’Isorella is intimate with the king.  There is a man named Barto Rizzo, who thinks me a guilty traitress, and she is making use of this man.  That must be her reason for prohibiting the marriage.  She cannot be false if she is capable of uniting extreme revolutionary agents and the king in one plot, I think; I do not know.”  Vittoria concluded her perfect expression of confidence with this atoning doubtfulness.

Countess Ammiani obtained her consent that she would not quit her side.

After Violetta had gone, Carlo, though he shunned secret interviews, addressed his betrothed as one who was not strange to his occupation and the trial his heart was undergoing.  She could not doubt that she was beloved, in spite of the colourlessness and tonelessness of a love that appealed to her intellect.  He showed her a letter he had received from Laura, laughing at its abuse of Countess d’Isorella, and the sarcasms levelled at himself.

In this letter Laura said that she was engaged in something besides nursing.

Carlo pointed his finger to the sentence, and remarked, “I must have your promise—­a word from you is enough—­that you will not meddle with any intrigue.”

Vittoria gave the promise, half trusting it to bring the lost bloom of their love to him; but he received it as a plain matter of necessity.  Certain of his love, she wondered painfully that it should continue so barren of music.

“Why am I to pledge myself that I will be useless?” she asked.  “You mean, my Carlo, that I am to sit still, and watch, and wait.”

He answered, “I will tell you this much:  I can be struck vitally through you.  In the game I am playing, I am able to defend myself.  If you enter it, distraction begins.  Stay with my mother.”

“Am I to know nothing?”

“Everything—­in good time.”

“I might—­might I not help you, my Carlo?”

“Yes; and nobly too.  And I show you the way.”

Agostino and Carlo made an expedition to Turin.  Before he went, Carlo took her in his arms.

“Is it coming?” she said, shutting her eyelids like a child expecting the report of firearms.

He pressed his lips to the closed eyes.  “Not yet; but are you growing timid?”

His voice seemed to reprove her.

She could have told him that keeping her in the dark among unknown terrors ruined her courage; but the minutes were too precious, his touch too sweet.  In eyes and hands he had become her lover again.  The blissful minutes rolled away like waves that keep the sunshine out at sea.