Her heart beat fast when she found herself alone with the terrible woman.

Till then she had never seen a tragic face.  Compared with this tawny colourlessness, this evil brow, this shut mouth, Laura, even on the battle-field, looked harmless.  It was like the face of a dead savage.  The eyeballs were full on Vittoria, as if they dashed at an obstacle, not embraced an image.  In proportion as they seemed to widen about her, Vittoria shrank.  The whole woman was blood to her gaze.

When she was capable of speaking, she said entreatingly: 

“I knew his brother.”

Not a sign of life was given in reply.

Companionship with this ghost of broad daylight made the flattering
Tyrolese feathers at both windows a welcome sight.

Precautions had been taken to bind the woman’s arms.  Vittoria offered to loosen the cords, but she dared not touch her without a mark of assent.

“I know Angelo Guidascarpi, Rinaldo’s brother,” she spoke again.

The woman’s nostrils bent inward, as when the breath we draw is keen as a sword to the heart.  Vittoria was compelled to look away from her.

At the mid-day halt Count Karl deigned to justify to her his intended execution of Rinaldo—­the accomplice in the slaying of his brother Count Paula.  He was evidently eager to obtain her good opinion of the Austrian military.  “But for this miserable spirit of hatred against us,” he said, “I should have espoused an Italian lady;” and he asked, “Why not?  For that matter, in all but blood we Lenkensteins are half Italian, except when Italy menaces the empire.  Can you blame us for then drawing the sword in earnest?”

He proffered his version of the death of Count Paul.  She kept her own silent in her bosom.

Clelia Guidascarpi, according to his statement, had first been slain by her brothers.  Vittoria believed that Clelia had voluntarily submitted to death and died by her own hand.  She was betrothed to an Italian nobleman of Bologna, the friend of the brothers.  They had arranged the marriage; she accepted the betrothal.  “She loved my brother, poor thing!” said Count Karl.  “She concealed it, and naturally.  How could she take a couple of wolves into her confidence?  If she had told the pair of ruffians that she was plighted to an Austrian, they would have quieted her at an earlier period.  A woman! a girl—­signorina!  The intolerable cowardice amazes me.  It amazes me that you or anyone can uphold the character of such brutes.  And when she was dead they lured my brother to the house and slew him; fell upon him with daggers, stretched him at the foot of her coffin, and then—­what then?—­ran! ran for their lives.  One has gone to his account.  We shall come across the other.  He is among that volunteer party which attacked us yesterday.  The body was carried off by them; it is sufficient testimony that Angelo Guidascarpi is in the neighbourhood.  I should be hunting him now but that I am under orders to march South-east.”