Looking at shut eyelids when you love the eyes beneath, is more or less a teazing mystery that draws down your mouth to kiss them.  Their lashes seem to answer you in some way with infantine provocation; and fine eyelashes upon a face bent sideways, suggest a kind of internal smiling.  Giacinta looked till she could bear it no longer; she kissed the cheek, and crooned over it, gladdened by a sense of jealous possession when she thought of the adored thing her mistress had been overnight.  One of her hugs awoke Vittoria, who said, ‘Shut my window, mother,’ and slept again fast.  Giacinta saw that they were nearer to the mountains.  Mountain-shadows were thrown out, and long lank shadows of cypresses that climbed up reddish-yellow undulations, told of the sun coming.  The sun threw a blaze of light into the carriage.  He shone like a good friend, and helped Giacinta think, as she had already been disposed to imagine, that the machinery by which they had been caught out of Milan was amicable magic after all, and not to be screamed at.  The sound medicine of sleep and sunlight was restoring livelier colour to her mistress.  Giacinta hushed her now, but Vittoria’s eyes opened, and settled on her, full of repose.

‘What are you thinking about?’ she asked.

’Signorina, my own, I was thinking whether those people I see on the hill-sides are as fond of coffee as I am.’

Vittoria sat up and tumbled questions out headlong, pressing her eyes and gathering her senses; she shook with a few convulsions, but shed no tears.  It was rather the discomfort of their position than any vestige of alarm which prompted Giacinta to project her head and interrogate the coachman and chasseur.  She drew back, saying, ’Holy Virgin! they are Germans.  We are to stop in half-an-hour.’  With that she put her hands to use in arranging and smoothing Vittoria’s hair and dress—­the dress of Camilla—­of which triumphant heroine Vittoria felt herself an odd little ghost now.  She changed her seat that she might look back on Milan.  A letter was spied fastened with a pin to one of the cushions.  She opened it, and read in pencil writing: 

’Go quietly.  You have done all that you could do for good or for ill.  The carriage will take you to a safe place, where you will soon see your friends and hear the news.  Wait till you reach Meran.  You will see a friend from England.  Avoid the lion’s jaw a second time.  Here you compromise everybody.  Submit, or your friends will take you for a mad girl.  Be satisfied.  It is an Austrian who rescues you.  Think yourself no longer appointed to put match to powder.  Drown yourself if a second frenzy comes.  I feel I could still love your body if the obstinate soul were out of it.  You know who it is that writes.  I might sign “Michiella” to this:  I have a sympathy with her anger at the provoking Camilla.  Addio!  From La Scala.’