Wilfrid was intent on her flushed beauty and the half-compressed quiver of her lip.

She quitted him and hurried to Angelo.  Her joy broke out in a cry of thankfulness at sight of Angelo; he had risen from his bed; he could stand, and he smiled.

“That Jacopo is just now the nearest link to me,” he said, when she related her having seen the two men guarded by soldiers; he felt helpless, and spoke in resignation.  She followed his eye about the room till it rested on the stilet.  This she handed to him.  “If they think of having me alive!” he said softly.  The Italian and his wife who had given him shelter and nursed him came in, and approved his going, though they did not complain of what they might chance to have incurred.  He offered them his purse, and they took it.  Minutes of grievous expectation went by; Vittoria could endure them no longer; she ran out to the hotel, near which, in the shade of a poplar, Wilfrid was smoking quietly.  He informed her that his sister and the doctor had driven out to meet Captain Gambier; his brother-in-law was alone upstairs.  Her look of amazement touched him more shrewdly than scorn, and he said, “What on earth can I do?”

“Order out a carriage.  Send your brother-in-law in it.  If you tell him ‘for your health,’ he will go.”

“On my honour, I don’t know where those three words would not send him,” said Wilfrid; but he did not move, and was for protesting that he really could not guess what was the matter, and the ground for all this urgency.

Vittoria compelled her angry lips to speak out her suspicions explicitly, whereupon he glanced at the sun-glare in a meditation, occasionally blinking his eyes.  She thought, “Oh, heaven! can he be waiting for me to coax him?” It was the truth, though it would have been strange to him to have heard it.  She grew sure that it was the truth; never had she despised living creature so utterly as when she murmured, “My best friend! my brother! my noble Wilfrid! my old beloved! help me now, without loss of a minute.”

It caused his breath to come and go unevenly.

“Repeat that—­once, only once,” he said.

She looked at him with the sorrowful earnestness which, as its meaning was shut from him, was so sweet.

“You will repeat it by-and-by?—­another time?  Trust me to do my utmost.  Old beloved!  What is the meaning of ‘old beloved’?  One word in explanation.  If it means anything, I would die for you!  Emilia, do you hear?—­die for you!  To me you are nothing old or by-gone, whatever I may be to you.  To me—­yes, I will order the carriage you are the Emilia—­listen! listen!  Ah! you have shut your ears against me.  I am bound in all seeming, but I—­you drive me mad; you know your power.  Speak one word, that I may feel—­that I may be convinced . . , or not a single word; I will obey you without.  I have said that you command my life.”