They beheld the riding forth of troopers and a knot of officers hotly conversing together.  At another point the duchess and the Lenkenstein ladies, Count Lenkenstein, Count Serabiglione, and Wilfrid paced up and down, waiting for music.  Laura left the public places and crossed an upper bridge over the Passeyr, near the castle, by which route she skirted vines and dropped over sloping meadows to some shaded boulders where the Passeyr found a sandy bay, and leaped in transparent green, and whitened and swung twisting in a long smooth body down a narrow chasm, and noised below.  The thundering torrent stilled their sensations:  and the water, making battle against great blocks of porphyry and granite, caught their thoughts.  So strong was the impression of it on Vittoria’s mind, that for hours after, every image she conceived seemed proper to the inrush and outpour; the elbowing, the tossing, the foaming, the burst on stones, and silvery bubbles under and silvery canopy above, the chattering and huzzaing; all working on to the one-toned fall beneath the rainbow on the castle-rock.

Next day, the chasseur Jacob Baumwalder Feckelwitz deposed in full company at Sonnenberg, that, obeying Count Serabiglione’s instructions, he had gone down to the city, and had there seen Lieutenant Pierson with the ladies in front of the hotel; he had followed the English carriage, which took up a man who was standing ready on crutches at the corner of the Laubengasse, and drove rapidly out of the North-western gate, leading to Schlanders and Mals and the Engadine.  He had witnessed the transfer of the crippled man from one carriage to another, and had raised shouts and given hue and cry, but the intervention of the storm had stopped his pursuit.

He was proceeding to say what his suppositions were.  Count Lenkenstein lifted his finger for Wilfrid to follow him out of the room.  Count Serabiglione went at their heels.  Then Count Lenkenstein sent for his wife, whom Anna and Lena accompanied.

“How many persons are you going to ruin in the course of your crusade, my dear?” the duchess said to Laura.

“Dearest, I am penitent when I succeed,” said Laura.

“If that young man has been assisting you, he is irretrievably ruined.”

“I am truly sorry for him.”

“As for me, the lectures I shall get in Vienna are terrible to think of.  This is the consequence of being the friend of both parties, and a peace-maker.”

Count Serabiglione returned alone from the scene at the examination, rubbing his hands and nodding affably to his daughter.  He maliciously declined to gratify the monster of feminine curiosity in the lump, and doled out the scene piecemeal.  He might state, he observed, that it was he who had lured Beppo to listen at the door during the examination of the prisoners; and who had then planted a spy on him—­following the dictation of precepts exceedingly old.  “We are generally beaten, duchess; I admit it; and yet