“You refuse to sing?” said Laura; and under her breath, “When I bid you not, you insist!”

“Can she possibly sing before she grows accustomed to the air of the place?” said the duchess.

Merthyr gravely prescribed a week’s diet on grapes antecedent to the issuing of a note.  “Have you never heard what a sustained grape-diet will do for the bullfinches?”

“Never,” exclaimed the duchess.  “Is that the secret of their German education?”

“Apparently, for we cannot raise them to the same pitch of perfection in England.”

“I will try it upon mine.  Every morning they shall have two big bunches.”

“Fresh plucked, and with the first sunlight on them.  Be careful of the rules.”

Wilfrid remarked, “To make them exhibit the results, you withdraw the benefit suddenly, of course?”

“We imitate the general run of Fortune’s gifts as much as we can,” said Merthyr.

“That is the training for little shrill parrots:  we have none in Italy,” Laura sighed, mock dolefully; “I fear the system would fail among us.”

“It certainly would not build Como villas,” said Lena.

Laura cast sharp eyes on her pretty face.

“It is adapted for caged voices that are required to chirrup to tickle the ears of boors.”

Anna said to the duchess:  “I hope your little birds are all well this morning.”

“Come to them presently with me and let our ears be tickled,” the duchess laughed in answer; and the spiked dialogue broke, not to revive.

The duchess had observed the constant direction of Anna’s eyes upon Vittoria during the repast, and looked an interrogation at Anna, who replied to it firmly.  “I must be present,” the duchess whispered.  She drew Vittoria away by the hand, telling Merthyr Powys that it was unkind to him, but that he should be permitted to claim his fair friend from noon to the dinner-bell.

Laura and Bianca were discussing the same subject as the one for which Anna desired an interview with Vittoria.  It was to know the conditions and cause of the duel between Angelo Guidascarpi and Captain Weisspriess, and whither Angelo had fled.  “In other words, you cry for vengeance under the name of justice,” Laura phrased it, and put up a prayer for Angelo’s escape.

The countess rebuked her.  “It is men like Angelo who are a scandal to Italy.”

“Proclaimed so; but by what title are they judged?” Laura retorted.  “I have heard that his duel with Count Paul was fair, and that the grounds for it were just.  Deplore it; but to condemn an Italian gentleman without hearing his personal vindication, is infamous; nay, it is Austrian.  I know next to nothing of the story.  Countess Ammiani has assured me that the brothers have a clear defence—­not from your Vienna point of view:  Italy and Vienna are different sides of the shield.”

Vittoria spoke most humbly before Anna; her sole irritating remark was, that even if she were aware of the direction of Angelo’s flight, she would not betray him.