‘They love you.’

‘I have done them no good.’

‘Every possible good.  And now, mine is the duty to protect you.’

’And yesterday we were strangers!  Signor Angelo, you spoke of sbirri.  There is no rising in Bologna.  Why are they after you?  You look too gentle to give them cause.’

’Do I look gentle?  But what I carry is no burden.  Who that saw you last night would know you for Camilla?  You will hear of my deeds, and judge.  We shall soon have men upon the road; you must be hidden.  See, there:  there are our colours in the sky.  Austria cannot wipe them out.  Since I was a boy I have always slept in a bed facing East, to keep that truth before my eyes.  Black and yellow drop to the earth:  green, white, and red mount to heaven.  If more of my countrymen saw these meanings!—­but they are learning to.  My tutor called them Germanisms.  If so, I have stolen a jewel from my enemy.’

Vittoria mentioned the Chief.

‘Yes,’ said Angelo; ’he has taught us to read God’s handwriting.  I revere him.  It’s odd; I always fancy I hear his voice from a dungeon, and seeing him looking at one light.  He has a fault:  he does not comprehend the feelings of a nobleman.  Do you think he has made a convert of our Carlo in that?  Never!  High blood is ineradicable.’

‘I am not of high blood,’ said Vittoria.

’Countess Ammiani overlooks it.  And besides, low blood may be elevated without the intervention of a miracle.  You have a noble heart, signorina.  It may be the will of God that you should perpetuate our race.  All of us save Carlo Ammiani seem to be falling.’

Vittoria bent her head, distressed by a broad beam of sunlight.  The country undulating to the plain lay under them, the great Alps above, and much covert on all sides.  They entered a forest pathway, following chance for safety.  The dark leafage and low green roofing tasted sweeter to their senses than clear air and sky.  Dark woods are home to fugitives, and here there was soft footing, a surrounding gentleness,—­grass, and moss with dead leaves peacefully flat on it.  The birds were not timorous, and when a lizard or a snake slipped away from her feet, it was amusing to Vittoria and did not hurt her tenderness to see that they were feared.  Threading on beneath the trees, they wound by a valley’s incline, where tumbled stones blocked the course of a green water, and filled the lonely place with one onward voice.  When the sun stood over the valley they sat beneath a chestnut tree in a semicircle of orange rock to eat the food which Angelo had procured at the inn.  He poured out wine for her in the hollow of a stone, deep as an egg-shell, whereat she sipped, smiling at simple contrivances; but no smile crossed the face of Angelo.  He ate and drank to sustain his strength, as a weapon is sharpened; and having done, he gathered up what was left, and lay at her feet with his eyes fixed upon an old grey stone.  She, too, sat brooding.