Vittoria replied gently, “If they were like you!”

“Yes, if they were like the duchess,” said Laura, “nothing would be left for us then but to hate ourselves.  Fortunately, we deal with brutes.”

She was quite pitiless in prompting Vittoria to hasten down, and marvelled at the evident reluctance in doing this slight duty, of one whose courage she had recently seen rise so high.  Vittoria was equally amazed by her want of sympathy, which was positive coldness, and her disregard for the sentiments of her hostess.  She dressed hesitatingly, responding with forlorn eyes to Laura’s imperious “Come.”  When at last she was ready to descend, Laura took her dawn, full of battle.  The duchess had gone in advance to keep the peace.

The ladies of the Lenkenstein family were standing at one window of the morning room conversing.  Apart from them, Merthyr Powys and Wilfrid were examining one of the cumbrous antique arms ranged along the wall.  The former of these old English friends stepped up to Vittoria quickly and kissed her forehead.  Wilfrid hung behind him; he made a poor show of indifference, stammered English and reddened; remembering that he was under observation he recovered wonderfully, and asked, like a patron, “How is the voice?” which would have been foolish enough to Vittoria’s more attentive hearing.  She thanked him for the service he had rendered her at La Scala.  Countess Lena, who looked hard at both, saw nothing to waken one jealous throb.

“Bianca, you expressed a wish to give a salute to my eldest daughter,” said Laura.

The Countess of Lenkenstein turned her head.  “Have I done so?”

“It is my duty to introduce her,” interposed the duchess, and conducted the ceremony with a show of its embracing these ladies, neither one of whom changed her cold gaze.

Careful that no pause should follow, she commenced chatting to the ladies and gentlemen alternately, keeping Vittoria under her peculiar charge.  Merthyr alone seconded her efforts to weave the web of converse, which is an armistice if not a treaty on these occasions.

“Have you any fresh caricatures from Vienna?” Laura continued to address her sister.

“None have reached me,” said the neutral countess.

“Have they finished laughing?”

“I cannot tell.”

“At any rate, we sing still,” Laura smiled to Vittoria.  “You shall hear us after breakfast.  I regret excessively that you were not in Milan on the Fifteenth.  We will make amends to you as much as possible.  You shall hear us after breakfast.  You will sing to please my sister, Sandra mia, will you not?”

Vittoria shook her head.  Like those who have become passive, she read faces—­the duchess’s imploring looks thrown from time to time to the Lenkenstein ladies, Wilfrid’s oppressed forehead, the resolute neutrality of the countess—­and she was not only incapable of seconding Laura’s aggressive war, but shrank from the involvement and sickened at the indelicacy.  Anna’s eyes were fixed on her and filled her with dread lest she should be resolving to demand a private interview.