“It is a poor dog, not of a good breed, signorina,” Luigi said, casting a tolerant glance over his shoulder.  “Faithful, but a poor nose.  Ah! you gave me this cigarette.  Not the Virgin could have touched my marrow as you did.  That’s to be remembered by-and-by.  Now, you are going to sing on the night of the fifteenth of September.  Change that night.  The Signor Antonio-Pericles watches you, and he is a friend of the Government, and the Government is snoring for you to think it asleep.  The Signor Antonio-Pericles pacifies the Tedeschi, but he will know all that you are doing, and how easy it will be, and how simple, for you to let me know what you think he ought to know, and just enough to keep him comfortable!  So we work like a machine, signorina.  Only, not through that Beppo, for he is vain of his legs, and his looks, and his service, and because he has carried a gun and heard it go off.  Yes; I am a spy.  But I am honest.  I, too, have visited England.  One can be honest and a spy.  Signorina, I have two arms, but only one heart.  If you will be gracious and consider!  Say, here are two hands.  One hand does this thing, one hand does that thing, and that thing wipes out this thing.  It amounts to clear reasoning!  Here are two eyes.  Were they meant to see nothing but one side!  Here is a tongue with a line down the middle almost to the tip of it—­which is for service.  That Beppo couldn’t deal double, if he would; for he is imperfectly designed—­a mere dog’s pattern!  But, only one heart, signorina—­mind that.  I will never forget the cigarette.  I shall smoke it before I leave the mountain, and think—­oh!”

Having illustrated the philosophy of his system, Luigi continued:  “I am going to tell you everything.  Pray, do not look on Beppo!  This is important.  The Signor Antonio-Pericles sent me to spy on you, because he expects some people to come up the mountain, and you know them; and one is an Austrian officer, and he is an Englishman by birth, and he is coming to meet some English friends who enter Italy from Switzerland over the Moro, and easily up here on mules or donkeys from Pella.  The Signor Antonio-Pericles has gold ears for everything that concerns the signorina.  ‘A patriot is she!’ he says; and he is jealous of your English friends.  He thinks they will distract you from your studies; and perhaps”—­Luigi nodded sagaciously before he permitted himself to say—­“perhaps he is jealous in another way.  I have heard him speak like a sonnet of the signorina’s beauty.  The Signor Antonio-Pericles thinks that you have come here to-day to meet them.  When he heard that you were going to leave Milan for Baveno, he was mad, and with two fists up, against all English persons.  The Englishman who is an Austrian officer is quartered at Verona, and the Signor Antonio Pericles said that the Englishman should not meet you yet, if he could help it.”

Victoria stood brooding.  “Who can it be,—­who is an Englishman, and an Austrian officer, and knows me?”