“Dearest signora,

“You now learn a new and blessed thing.  God make the marriage fruitful!  I have daughter as well as son.  Our Carlo still hesitated, for hearing of the disgraceful rumours in Milan, he fancied a duty lay there for him to do.  Another menace came to my daughter from the madman Barto Rizzo.  God can use madmen to bring about the heavenly designs.  We decided that Carlo’s name should cover her.  My son was like a man who has awakened up.  M. Powys was our good genius.  He told her that he had promised you to bring it about.  He, and Angelo, and myself, were the witnesses.  So much before heaven!  I crossed the lake with them to Stress.  I was her tirewoman, with Giacinta, to whom I will give a husband for the tears of joy she dropped upon the bed.  Blessed be it!  I placed my daughter in my Carlo’s arms.  Both kissed their mother at parting.

“This is something fixed.  I had great fears during the war.  You do not yet know what it is to have a sonless son in peril.  Terror and remorse haunted me for having sent the last Ammiani out to those fields, unattached to posterity.

“An envelope from Milan arrived on the morning of his nuptials.  It was intercepted by me.  The German made a second appointment at Como.  Angelo undertook to assist me in saving my son’s honour.  So my Carlo had nothing to disturb his day.  Pray with me, Laura Piaveni, that the day and the night of it may prove fresh springs of a river that shall pass our name through the happier mornings of Italy!  I commend you to God, my dear, and am your friend,

“MARCCELLINA, countess Ammiani.

“P.S.  Countess Alessandra will be my daughter’s name.”

The letter was read and re-read before the sweeter burden it contained would allow Laura to understand that Countess Ammiani had violated a seal and kept a second hostile appointment hidden from her son.

“Amalia, you detest me,” she said, when they had left the guests for a short space, and the duchess had perused the letter, “but acknowledge Angelo Guidascarpi’s devotion.  He came here in the midst of you Germans, at the risk of his life, to offer battle for his cousin.”

The duchess, however, had much more to say for the magnanimity of Major Weisspriess, who, if he saw him, had spared him; she compelled Laura to confess that Weisspriess must have behaved with some nobleness, which Laura did, humming and I ‘brumming,’ and hinting at the experience he had gained of Angelo’s skill.  Her naughtiness provoked first, and then affected Amalia; in this mood the duchess had the habit of putting on a grand air of pitying sadness.  Laura knew it well, and never could make head against it.  She wavered, as a stray floating thing detached from an eddy whirls and passes on the flood.  Close on Amalia’s bosom she sobbed out:  “Yes; you Austrians have good qualities some:  many! but you choose to think us mean because we can’t readily admit them when we are under your heels.  Just see me; what a crumb feeds me!  I am crying with delight at a marriage!”