‘The Signorina Vittoria,’ returned Barto—­his articulation came forth serpent-like—­’she is not a spy, you think.  She has been in England:  I have been in England.  She writes; I can read.  She is a thing of whims.  Shall she hold the goblet of Italy in her hand till it overflows?  She writes love-letters to an English whitecoat.  I have read them.  Who bids her write?  Her whim!  She warns her friends not to enter Milan.  She—­whose puppet is she?  Not yours; not mine.  She is the puppet of an English Austrian!’

Barto drew back, for Ammiani was advancing.

‘What is it you mean?’ he cried.

‘I mean,’ said Ammiani, still moving on him, ’I mean to drag you first before Count Medole, and next before the signorina; and you shall abjure your slander in her presence.  After that I shall deal with you.  Mark me!  I have you:  I am swifter on foot, and I am stronger.  Come quietly.’

Barto smiled in grim contempt.

‘Keep your foot fast on that stone, you’re a prisoner,’ he replied, and seeing Ammiani coming, ‘Net him, my sling-stone! my serpent!’ he signalled to his wife, who threw herself right round Ammiani in a tortuous twist hard as wire-rope.  Stung with irritation, and a sense of disgrace and ridicule and pitifulness in one, Ammiani, after a struggle, ceased the attempt to disentwine her arms, and dragged her clinging to him.  He was much struck by hearing her count deliberately, in her desperation, numbers from somewhere about twenty to one hundred.  One hundred was evidently the number she had to complete, for when she had reached it she threw her arms apart.  Barto was out of sight.  Ammiani waved her on to follow in his steps:  he was sick of her presence, and had the sensations of a shame-faced boy whom a girl has kissed.  She went without uttering a word.

The dawn had now traversed the length of the streets, and thrown open the wide spaces of the city.  Ammiani found himself singing, ’There’s yet a heart in Italy!’ but it was hardly the song of his own heart.  He slept that night on a chair in the private room of his office, preferring not to go to his mother’s house.  ’There ‘s yet a heart in Italy!’ was on his lips when he awoke with scattered sensations, all of which collected in revulsion against the song.  ‘There’s a very poor heart in Italy!’ he said, while getting his person into decent order; ’it’s like the bell in the lunatic’s tower between Venice and the Lido:  it beats now and then for meals:  hangs like a carrion-lump in the vulture’s beak meanwhile!’

These and some other similar sentiments, and a heat about the brows whenever he set them frowning over what Barto had communicated concerning an English Austrian, assured Ammiani that he had no proper command of himself:  or was, as the doctors would have told him, bilious.  It seemed to him that he must have dreamed of meeting the dark and subtle Barto Rizzo overnight; on realizing that fact he could not