Nothing came of this adventure for some time.  Wilfrid’s reflections (apart from the horrible hard truth of Vittoria’s marriage, against which he dashed his heart perpetually, almost asking for anguish) had leisure to examine the singularity of his feeling a commencement of pride in the clasping of his musket;—­he who on the first day of his degradation had planned schemes to stick the bayonet-point between his breast-bones:  he thought as well of the queer woman’s way in Countess Medole’s adjuration to him that he should never love a married woman;—­in her speaking, as it seemed, on his behalf, when it was but an outcry of her own acute wound.  Did he love a married woman?  He wanted to see one married woman for the last time; to throw a frightful look on her; to be sublime in scorn of her; perhaps to love her all the better for the cruel pain, in the expectation of being consoled.  While doing duty as a military machine, these were the pictures in his mind; and so well did his routine drudgery enable him to bear them, that when he heard from General Schoneck that the term of his degradation was to continue in Italy, and from his sister that General Pierson refused to speak of him or hear of him until he had regained his gold shoulder-strap, he revolted her with an ejaculation of gladness, and swore brutally that he desired to have no advancement; nothing but sleep and drill; and, he added conscientiously, Havannah cigars.  “He has grown to be like a common soldier,” Adela said to herself with an amazed contemplation of the family tie.  Still, she worked on his behalf, having, as every woman has, too strong an instinct as to what is natural to us to believe completely in any eccentric assertion.  She carried the tale of his grief and trials and his romantic devotion to the Imperial flag, daily to Countess Lena; persisting, though she could not win a responsive look from Lena’s face.

One day on the review-ground, Wilfrid beheld Prince Radocky bending from his saddle in conversation with Weisspriess.  The prince galloped up to General Pierson, and stretched his hand to where Wilfrid was posted as marker to a wheeling column, kept the hand stretched out, and spoke furiously, and followed the General till he was ordered to head his regiment.  Wilfrid began to hug his musket less desperately.  Little presents—­feminine he knew by the perfumes floating round them,—­gloves and cigars, fine handkerchiefs, and silks for wear, came to his barracks.  He pretended to accuse his sister of sending them.  She in honest delight accused Lena.  Lena then accused herself of not having done so.

It was winter:  Vittoria had been seen in Milan.  Both Lena and Wilfrid spontaneously guessed her to be the guilty one.  He made a funeral pyre of the gifts and gave his sister the ashes, supposing that she had guessed with the same spirited intuition.  It suited Adela to relate this lover’s performance to Lena.  “He did well!” Lena said, and kissed Adela for the first time.  Adela was