Vittoria’s dwelling-place was near the Duomo, in a narrow thoroughfare leading from the Duomo to the Piazza of La Scala, where a confectioner of local fame conferred upon the happier members of the population most piquant bocconi and tartlets, and offered by placard to give an emotion to the nobility, the literati, and the epicures of Milan, and to all foreigners, if the aforesaid would adventure upon a trial of his art.  Meanwhile he let lodgings.  It was in the house of this famous confectioner Zotti that Vittoria and her mother had lived after leaving England for Italy.  As Vittoria came under the fretted shadow of the cathedral, she perceived her mother standing with Zotti at the house-door, though the night was far advanced.  She laughed, and walked less hurriedly.  Ammiani now asked her if she had been alarmed.  ’Not alarmed,’ she said, ’but a little more nervous than I thought I should be.’

He was spared from putting any further question by her telling him that Luigi, the Motterone spy, had in all probability done her a service in turning one or other f the machinations of the Signor Antonio.  ’My madman,’ she called this latter.  ’He has got his Irma instead of me.  We shall have to supply her place tomorrow; she is travelling rapidly, and on my behalf!  I think, Signor Carlo, you would do well by going to the maestro when you leave me, and telling him that Irma has been caught into the skies.  Say, “Jealous that earth should possess such overpowering loveliness,” or “Attracted in spite of themselves by that combination of genius and beauty which is found united nowhere but in Irma, the spirits of heaven determined to rob earth of her Lazzeruola.”  Only tell it to him seriously, for my dear Rocco will have to work with one of the singers all day, and I ought to be at hand by them to help her, if I dared stir out.  What do you think?’

Ammiani pronounced his opinion that it would be perilous for her to go abroad.

’I shall in truth, I fear, have a difficulty in getting to La Scala unseen,’ she said; ’except that we are cunning people in our house.  We not only practise singing and invent wonderful confectionery, but we do conjuring tricks.  We profess to be able to deceive anybody whom we please.’

‘Do the dupes enlist in a regiment?’ said Ammiani, with an intonation that professed his readiness to serve as a recruit.  His humour striking with hers, they smiled together in the bright fashion of young people who can lose themselves in a ray of fancy at any season.

Vittoria heard her mother’s wailful voice.  ‘Twenty gnats in one,’ she said.

Ammiani whispered quickly to know whether she had decided for the morrow.  She nodded, and ran up to her mother, who cried: 

’At this hour!  And Beppo has been here after you, and he told me I wrote for him, in Italian, when not a word can I put to paper:  I wouldn’t!—­and you are threatened by dreadful dangers, he declares.  His behaviour was mad; they are all mad over in this country, I believe.  I have put the last stitch to your dress.  There is a letter or two upstairs for you.  Always letters!’