On a night in the month of February, a servant out of livery addressed him at the barrack-gates, requesting him to go at once to a certain hotel, where his sister was staying.  He went, and found there, not his sister, but Countess Medole.  She smiled at his confusion.  Both she and the prince, she said, had spared no effort to get him reinstated in his rank; but his uncle continually opposed the endeavours of all his friends to serve him.  This interview was dictated by the prince’s wish, so that he might know them to be a not ungrateful couple.  Wilfrid’s embarrassment in standing before a lady in private soldier’s uniform, enabled him with very peculiar dignity to declare that his present degradation, from the General’s point of view, was a just punishment, and he did not crave to have it abated.  She remarked that it must end soon.  He made a dim allusion to the littleness of humanity.  She laughed.  “It’s the language of an unfortunate lover,” she said, and straightway, in some undistinguished sentence, brought the name of Countess Alessandra Ammiani tingling to his ears.  She feared that she could not be of service to him there; “at least, not just yet,” the lady astonished him by remarking.  “I might help you to see her.  If you take my advice you will wait patiently.  You know us well enough to understand what patience will do.  She is supposed to have married for love.  Whether she did or not, you must allow a young married woman two years’ grace.”

The effect of speech like this, and more in a similar strain of frank corruptness, was to cleanse Wilfrid’s mind, and nerve his heart, and he denied that he had any desire to meet the Countess Ammiani, unless he could perform a service that would be agreeable to her.

The lady shrugged.  “Well, that is one way.  She has enemies, of course.”

Wilfrid begged for their names.

“Who are they not?” she replied.  “Chiefly women, it is true.”

He begged most earnestly for their names; he would have pleaded eloquently, but dreaded that the intonation of one in his low garb might be taken for a whine; yet he ventured to say that if the countess did imagine herself indebted to him in a small degree, the mention of two or three of the names of Countess Alessandra Ammiani’s enemies would satisfy him.

“Countess Lena von Lenkenstein, Countess Violetta d’Isorella, signorina Irma di Karski.”

She spoke the names out like a sum that she was paying down in gold pieces, and immediately rang the bell for her servant and carriage, as if she had now acquitted her debt.  Wilfrid bowed himself forth.  A resolution of the best kind, quite unconnected with his interests or his love, urged him on straight to the house of the Lenkensteins, where he sent up his name to Countess Lena.  After a delay of many minutes, Count Lenkenstein accompanied by General Pierson came down, both evidently affecting not to see him.  The General barely acknowledged his salute.