She laid herself down sideways, curling up her feet, with her cheek on the palm of her hand.

Angelo knelt and coaxed the fire, whose appetite, like that which is said to be ours, was fed by eating, for after the red jaws had taken half-a-dozen sticks, it sang out for more, and sent up flame leaping after flame and thick smoke.  Vittoria watched the scene through a thin division of her eyelids; the fire, the black abyss of country, the stars, and the sentinel figure.  She dozed on the edge of sleep, unable to yield herself to it wholly.  She believed that she was dreaming when by-and-by many voices filled her ears.  The fire was sounding like an angry sea, and the voices were like the shore, more intelligible, but confused in shriller clamour.  She was awakened by Angelo, who knelt on one knee and took her outlying hand; then she saw that men surrounded them, some of whom were hurling the lighted logs about, some trampling down the outer rim of flames.  They looked devilish to a first awakening glance.  He told her that the men were friendly; they were good Italians.  This had been the beacon arranged for the night of the Fifteenth, when no run of signals was seen from Milan; and yesterday afternoon it had been in mockery partially consumed.  ’We have aroused the country, signorina, and brought these poor fellows out of their beds.  They supposed that Milan must be up and at work.  I have explained everything to them.’

Vittoria had rather to receive their excuses than to proffer her own.  They were mostly youths dressed like the better class of peasantry.  They laughed at the incident, stating how glad they would have been to behold the heights all across the lakes ablaze and promising action for the morrow.  One square-shouldered fellow raised her lightly from the ground.  She felt herself to be a creature for whom circumstance was busily plotting, so that it was useless to exert her mind in thought.  The long procession sank down the darkness, leaving the low red fire to die out behind them.

Next morning she awoke in a warm bed, possessed by odd images of flames that stood up like crowing cocks, and cowered like hens above the brood.  She was in the house of one of their new friends, and she could hear Angelo talking in the adjoining room.  A conveyance was ready to take her on to Bormio.  A woman came to her to tell her this, appearing to have a dull desire to get her gone.  She was a draggled woman, with a face of slothful anguish, like one of the inner spectres of a guilty man.  She said that her husband was willing to drive the lady to Bormio for a sum that was to be paid at once into his wife’s hand; and little enough it was which poor persons could ever look for from your patriots and disturbers who seduced orderly men from their labour, and made widows and ruined households.  This was a new Italian language to Vittoria, and when the woman went on giving instances of households ruined by a husband’s vile infatuation about his country, she did not attempt to defend the reckless lord, but dressed quickly that she might leave the house as soon as she could.  Her stock of money barely satisfied the woman’s demand.  The woman seized it, and secreted it in her girdle.  When they had passed into the sitting-room, her husband, who was sitting conversing with Angelo, stretched out his hand and knocked the girdle.