‘Conduct you to the nearest inn; yes,’ he said, as if musing.  ’To the nearest inn, where you will sing to me; sing to me.  It is not an objectionable scheme.  The inns will not be choice:  but the society will be exquisite.  Say first, I am your sworn cavalier?’

‘It does not become me to say that,’ she replied, feigning a demure sincerity, on the verge of her patience.

‘You allow me to say it?’

She gave him a look of fire and passed him; whereat, following her, he clapped hands, and affected to regard the movement as part of an operatic scena.  ‘It is now time to draw your dagger,’ he said.  ’You have one, I’m certain.’

‘Anything but touch me!’ cried Vittoria, turning on him.  ’I know that I am safe.  You shall teaze me, if it amuses you.’

‘Am I not, now, the object of your detestation?’

‘You are near being so.’

‘You see!  You put on no disguise; why should I?’

This remark struck her with force.

‘My temper is foolish,’ she said softly.  ’I have always been used to kindness.’

He vowed that she had no comprehension of kindness; otherwise would she continue defiant of him?  She denied that she was defiant:  upon which he accused the hand in her bosom of clutching a dagger.  She cast the dagger at his feet.  It was nobly done, and he was not insensible to the courage and inspiration of the act; for it checked a little example of a trial of strength that he had thought of exhibiting to an armed damsel.

‘Shall I pick it up for you?’ he said.

‘You will oblige me,’ was her answer; but she could not control a convulsion of her underlip that her defensive instinct told her was best hidden.

‘Of course, you know you are safe,’ he repeated her previous words, while examining the silver handle of the dagger.  ’Safe? certainly!  Here is C. A. to V. . . .  A. neatly engraved:  a gift; so that the young gentleman may be sure the young lady will defend herself from lions and tigers and wild boars, if ever she goes through forests and over mountain passes.  I will not obtrude my curiosity, but who is V . . . .  A. ?’

The dagger was Carlo’s gift to her; the engraver, by singular misadventure, had put a capital letter for the concluding letter of her name instead of little a; she remembered the blush on Carlo’s face when she had drawn his attention to the error, and her own blush when she had guessed its meaning.

‘It spells my name,’ she said.

‘Your assumed name of Vittoria.  And who is C. A.?’

‘Those are the initials of Count Carlo Ammiani.’

‘Another lover?’

‘He is my sole lover.  He is my betrothed.  Oh, good God!’ she threw her eyes up to heaven; ’how long am I to endure the torture of this man in my pathway?  Go, sir, or let me go on.  You are intolerable.  It ’s the spirit of a tiger.  I have no fear of you.’

‘Nay, nay,’ said Weisspriess, ’I asked the question because I am under an obligation to run Count Carlo Ammiani through the body, and felt at once that I should regret the necessity.  As to your not fearing me, really, far from wishing to hurt you—­’