This strange scene concluded with the entry of the duchess, who retired partly as soon as she saw them.  Vittoria smiled to the old man, and left him:  the duchess gave her a hushed welcome, and took her place.  Vittoria was soon in Laura’s arms, where, after a storm of grief, she related the events of the journey following her flight from Milan.  Laura interrupted her but once to exclaim, “Angelo Guidascarpi!” Vittoria then heard from her briefly that Milan was quiet, Carlo Ammiani in prison.  It had been for tidings of her lover that she had hastened over the mountains to Meran.  She craved for all that could be told of him, but Laura repeated, as in a stupefaction, “Angelo Guidascarpi!” She answered Vittoria’s question by saying, “You could not have had so fatal a companion.”

“I could not have had so devoted a protector.”

“There is such a thing as an evil star.  We are all under it at present, to some degree; but he has been under it from his birth.  My Sandra, my beloved, I think I have pardoned you, if I ever pardon anyone!  I doubt it; but it is certain that I love you.  You have seen Countess Anna, or I would have told you to rest and get over your fatigue.  The Lenkensteins are here—­my poor sister among them.  You must show yourself.  I was provident enough to call at your mother’s for a box of your clothes before I ran out of wretched Milan.”

Further, the signora stated that Carlo might have to remain in prison.  She made no attempt to give dark or fair colour to the misery of the situation; telling Vittoria to lie on her bed and sleep, if sleep could be persuaded to visit her, she went out to consult with the duchess.  Vittoria lay like a dead body on the bed, counting the throbs of her heart.  It helped her to fall into a state of insensibility.  When she awoke, the room was dark; she felt that some one had put a silken cushion across her limbs.  The noise of a storm traversing the vale rang through the castle, and in the desolation of her soul, that stealthy act of kindness wrought in her till she almost fashioned a vow upon her lips that she would leave the world to toss its wrecks, and dedicate her life to God.

For, O heaven! of what avail is human effort?  She thought of the Chief, whose life was stainless, but who stood proscribed because his aim was too high to be attained within compass of a mortal’s years.  His error seemed that he had ever aimed at all.  He seemed less wise than the old priest of the oratory.  She could not disentangle him from her own profound humiliation and sense of fallen power.  Her lover’s imprisonment accused her of some monstrous culpability, which she felt unrepentingly, not as we feel a truth, but as we submit to a terrible force of pressure.

The morning light made her realize Carlo’s fate, to whom it would penetrate through a hideous barred loophole—­a defaced and dreadful beam.  She asked herself why she had fled from Milan.  It must have been some cowardly instinct that had prompted her to fly.  “Coward, coward! thing of vanity! you, a mere woman!” she cried out, and succeeded in despising herself sufficiently to think it possible that she had deserved to forfeit her lover’s esteem.