Carlo started up in anger.  Bending to Vittoria, he offered her his hand to lead her out, They went together.

“A good sign,” said the countess.

“A bad sign!” Laura sighed.  “If he had taken me out for explanation!  But tell me, my Agostino, are you the woman’s dupe?”

“I have been,” Agostino admitted frankly.

“You did really put faith in her?”

“She condescends to be so excessively charming.”

“You could not advance a better reason.”

“It is one of our best; perhaps our very best, where your sex is concerned, signora.”

“You are her dupe no more?”

“No more.  Oh, dear no!”

“You understand her now, do you?”

“For the very reason, signora, that I have been her dupe.  That is, I am beginning to understand her.  I am not yet in possession of the key.”

“Not yet in possession!” said Laura contemptuously; “but, never mind.  Now for Carlo.”

“Now for Carlo.  He declares that he never has been deceived by her.”

“He is perilously vain,” sighed the signora.

“Seriously”—­Agostino drew out the length of his beard—­“I do not suppose that he has been—­boys, you know, are so acute.  He fancies he can make her of service, and he shows some skill.”

“The skill of a fish to get into the net!”

“My dearest signora, you do not allow for the times.  I remember”—­Agostino peered upward through his eyelashes in a way that he had—­“I remember seeing in a meadow a gossamer running away with a spider-thread.  It was against all calculation.  But, observe:  there were exterior agencies at work:  a stout wind blew.  The ordinary reckoning is based on calms.  Without the operation of disturbing elements, the spider-thread would have gently detained the gossamer.”

“Is that meant for my son?” Countess Ammiani asked slowly, with incredulous emphasis.

Agostino and Laura, laughing in their hearts at the mother’s mysterious veneration for Carlo, had to explain that ‘gossamer’ was a poetic, generic term, to embrace the lighter qualities of masculine youth.

A woman’s figure passed swiftly by the window, which led Laura to suppose that the couple outside had parted.  She ran forth, calling to one of them, but they came hand in hand, declaring that they had seen neither woman nor man.  “And I am happy,” Vittoria whispered.  She looked happy, pale though she was.

“It is only my dreadful longing for rest which makes me pale,” she said to Laura, when they were alone.  “Carlo has proved to me that he is wiser than I am.”

“A proof that you love Carlo, perhaps,” Laura rejoined.

“Dearest, he speaks more gently of the king.”

“It may be cunning, or it may be carelessness.”

“Will nothing satisfy you, wilful sceptic?  He is quite alive to the Countess d’Isorella’s character.  He told me how she dazzled him once.”