arms.  Do, dearest!  Will you?  Will you, to please me, marry Johann?  He is not unworthy of you.”  And more of this hysterical hypocrisy, which brought on fits of weeping.  “I have lived among these savages till I have ceased to be human—­forgotten everything but my religion,” she said.  “I wanted Weisspriess to show them that they dared not stand up against a man of us, and to tame the snarling curs.  He did.  He is brave.  He did as much as a man could do, but I was unappeasable.  They seem to have bitten me till I had a devouring hunger to humiliate them.  Lena, will you believe that I have no hate for Carlo Ammiani or the woman he has married?  None! and yet, what have I done!” Anna smote her forehead.  “They are nothing but little dots on a field for me.  I don’t care whether they live or die.  It’s like a thing done in sleep.”

“I want to know what you have done,” said Lena caressingly.

“You at least will try to reward our truest hero, and make up to him for your sister’s unkindness, will you not?” Anna replied with a cajolery wonderfully like a sincere expression of her wishes.  “He will be a good husband..  He has proved it by having been so faithful a—­a lover.  So you may be sure of him.  And when he is yours, do not let him fight again, Lena, for I have a sickening presentiment that his next duel is his last.”

“Tell me,” Lena entreated her, “pray tell me what horrible thing you have done to prevent your marrying him.”

“With their pride and their laughter,” Anna made answer; “the fools! were they to sting us perpetually and not suffer for it?  That woman, the Countess Alessandra, as she’s now called—­have you forgotten that she helped our Paul’s assassin to escape? was she not eternally plotting against Austria?  And I say that I love Austria.  I love my country; I plot for my country.  She and her husband plot, and I plot to thwart them.  I have ruined myself in doing it.  Oh, my heart! why has it commenced beating again?  Why did Weisspriess come here?  He offended me.  He refused to do my orders, and left me empty-handed, and if he suffers too,” Anna relieved a hard look with a smile of melancholy, “I hope he will not; I cannot say more.”

“And I’m to console him if he does?” said Lena.

“At least, I shall be out of the way,” said Anna.  “I have still money enough to make me welcome in a convent.”

“I am to marry him?” Lena persisted, and half induced Anna to act a feeble part, composed of sobs and kisses and full confession of her plight.  Anna broke from her in time to leave what she had stated of herself vague and self-justificatory, so that she kept her pride, and could forgive, as she was ready to do even so far as to ask forgiveness in turn, when with her awakened enamoured heart she heard Vittoria sing at the concert of Pericles.  Countess Alessandra’s divine gift, which she would not withhold, though in a misery of apprehension; her grave eyes, which