“We shall have to awaken her.  What excuse—­what am I to say to her?”

“I beg you to wait for the occasion, Countess d’Isorella.  The words will come.”

Violetta bit her lip.  She had consented to this extraordinary step in an amazement.  As she contemplated it now, it seemed worse than a partial confession and an appeal to his generosity.  She broke out in pity for her horses, in dread of her coachman, declaring that it was impossible for her to give him the order to drive her anywhere but home.

“With your permission, countess, I will undertake to give him the order,” said Merthyr.

“But have you no compassion, signor Powys? and you are an Englishman!  I thought that Englishmen were excessively compassionate with horses.”

“They have been known to kill them in the service of their friends, nevertheless.”

“Well!”—­Violetta had recourse to the expression of her shoulders—­“and I am really to see Countess Anna?”

“In my presence.”

“Oh! that cannot be.  Pardon me; it is impossible.  She will decline the scene.  I say it with the utmost sincerity:  I know that she will refuse.”

“Then, countess,” Merthyr’s face grew hard, “if I am not to be in your company to prompt you, allow me to instruct you beforehand.”

Violetta looked at him eagerly, as one looks for tidings, with an involuntary beseeching quiver of the strained eyelids.

“No irony!” she said, fearing horribly that he was about to throw off the mask of irony.

This desperate effort of her wits at the crisis succeeded.

Merthyr, not knowing what design he had, hopeless of any definite end in tormenting the woman, and never having it in his mind merely to punish, was diverted by the exclamation to speak ironically.  “You can tell Countess Anna that it is only her temporal sovereign who is attacked, and that therefore—­” he could not continue.

“Some affection?” he murmured, in intense grief.

His manly forbearance touched her whose moral wit was too blunt to apprehend the contempt in it.

“Much affection—­much!” Violetta exclaimed.  “I have a deep affection for Count Ammiani; an old friendship.  Believe me! believe me!  I came here last night to save him.  Anything on earth that I can do, I will do—­on my honour; and do not smile at that—­I have never pledged it without fulfilling the oath.  I will not sleep while I can aid in preserving him.  He shall know that I am not the base person he has conceived me to be.  You, signor Powys, are not a man to paint all women black that are a little less than celestial—­are you?  I am told it is a trick with your, countrymen; and they have a poet who knew us!  I entreat you to confide in me.  I am at present quite unaware that Count Ammiani runs particular—­I mean personal danger.  He is in danger, of course; everyone can see it.  But, on my honour—­and never in my life have I spoken so earnestly, my friends would hardly recognize me—­I declare to you on my faith as a Christian lady, I am ignorant of any plot against him.  I can take a Cross and kiss it, like a peasant, and swear to you by the Madonna that I know nothing of it.”