A bird has wings;—­here is a voice.  Why were they given?  I should say, to go into the air.  Ah; but not if grandmother is ill.  What is a grandmother to the wings and the voice?  If to sing would kill,—­yes, then let the puny thing be silent!  But Sandra Belloni has a soul that has not a husband—­except her Art.  Her body is husbanded; but her soul is above her body.  You would treat it as below.  Art is her soul’s husband!  Besides, I have her promise.  She is a girl who will go up to a loaded gun’s muzzle if she gives her word.  And besides, her husband may be shot to-morrow.  So, all she sings now is clear gain.”

Vittoria sent word to him that she would sing.

In the meantime a change had come upon Countess Anna.  Weisspriess, her hero, appeared at her brother’s house, fresh from the field of Novara, whither he had hurried from Verona on a bare pretext, that was a breach of military discipline requiring friendly interposition in high quarters.  Unable to obtain an audience with Count Lenkenstein, he remained in the hall, hoping for things which he affected to care nothing for; and so it chanced that he saw Lena, who was mindful that her sister had suffered much from passive jealousy when Wilfrid returned from the glorious field, and led him to Anna, that she also might rejoice in a hero.  Weisspriess did not refrain from declaring on the way that he would rather charge against a battery.  Some time after, Anna lay in Lena’s arms, sobbing out one of the wildest confessions ever made by woman:—­she adored Weisspriess; she hated Nagen; but was miserably bound to the man she hated.  “Oh! now I know what love is.”  She repeated this with transparent enjoyment of the opposing sensations by whose shock the knowledge was revealed to her.

“How can you be bound to Major Nagan?” asked Lena.

“Oh! why? except that I have been possessed by devils.”

Anna moaned.  “Living among these Italians has distempered my blood.”  She exclaimed that she was lost.

“In what way can you be lost?” said Lena.

“I have squandered more than half that I possess.  I am almost a beggar.  I am no longer the wealthy Countess Anna.  I am much poorer than anyone of us.”

“But Major Weisspriess is a man of honour, and if he loves you—­”

“Yes; he loves me! he loves me! or would he come to me after I have sent him against a dozen swords?  But he is poor; he must, must marry a wealthy woman.  I used to hate him because I thought he had his eye on money.  I love him for it now.  He deserves wealth; he is a matchless hero.  He is more than the first swordsman of our army; he is a knightly man.  Oh my soul Johann!” She very soon fell to raving.  Lena was implored by her to give her hand to Weisspriess in reward for his heroism—­“For you are rich,” Anna said; “you will not have to go to him feeling that you have made him face death a dozen times for your sake, and that you thank