prayer, for he would have been at Vercelli now with Luciano and Emilio, and you might have gone to him; but he met this woman, who has convinced him that Piedmont will make a Winter march, and that his marriage must be delayed.”  The countess raised her face and drooped her hands from the wrists, exclaiming, “If I have lately omitted one prayer, enlighten me, blessed heaven!  I am blind; I cannot see for my son; I am quite blind.  I do not love the woman; therefore I doubt myself.  You, my daughter, tell me your thought of her, tell me what you think.  Young eyes observe; young heads are sometimes shrewd in guessing.”

Vittoria said, after a pause, “I will believe her to be true, if she supports the king.”  It was hardly truthful speaking on her part.

“How can Carlo have been persuaded!” the countess sighed.

“By me?” Victoria asked herself, and for a moment she was exulting.

She spoke from that emotion when it had ceased to animate her.

“Carlo was angry with the king.  He echoed Agostino, but Agostino does not sting as he did, and Carlo cannot avoid seeing what the king has sacrificed.  Perhaps the Countess d’Isorella has shown him promises of fresh aid in the king’s handwriting.  Suffering has made Carlo Alberto one with the Republicans, if he had other ambitions once.  And Carlo dedicates his blood to Lombardy:  he does rightly.  Dear countess—­my mother!  I have made him wait for me; I will be patient in waiting for him.  I know that Countess d’Isorella is intimate with the king.  There is a man named Barto Rizzo, who thinks me a guilty traitress, and she is making use of this man.  That must be her reason for prohibiting the marriage.  She cannot be false if she is capable of uniting extreme revolutionary agents and the king in one plot, I think; I do not know.”  Vittoria concluded her perfect expression of confidence with this atoning doubtfulness.

Countess Ammiani obtained her consent that she would not quit her side.

After Violetta had gone, Carlo, though he shunned secret interviews, addressed his betrothed as one who was not strange to his occupation and the trial his heart was undergoing.  She could not doubt that she was beloved, in spite of the colourlessness and tonelessness of a love that appealed to her intellect.  He showed her a letter he had received from Laura, laughing at its abuse of Countess d’Isorella, and the sarcasms levelled at himself.

In this letter Laura said that she was engaged in something besides nursing.

Carlo pointed his finger to the sentence, and remarked, “I must have your promise—­a word from you is enough—­that you will not meddle with any intrigue.”

Vittoria gave the promise, half trusting it to bring the lost bloom of their love to him; but he received it as a plain matter of necessity.  Certain of his love, she wondered painfully that it should continue so barren of music.

“Why am I to pledge myself that I will be useless?” she asked.  “You mean, my Carlo, that I am to sit still, and watch, and wait.”