.

'You allow me to say it?'

She gave him a look of fire and passed him; whereat, following her, he
clapped hands, and affected to regard the movement as part of an operatic
scena. 'It is now time to draw your dagger,' he said. 'You have one, I'm
certain.'

'Anything but touch me!' cried Vittoria, turning on him. 'I know that I
am safe. You shall teaze me, if it amuses you.'

'Am I not, now, the object of your detestation?'

'You are near being so.'

'You see! You put on no disguise; why should I?'

This remark struck her with force.

'My temper is foolish,' she said softly. 'I have always been used to
kindness.'

He vowed that she had no comprehension of kindness; otherwise would she
continue defiant of him? She denied that she was defiant: upon which he
accused the hand in her bosom of clutching a dagger. She cast the dagger
at his feet. It was nobly done, and he was not insensible to the courage
and inspiration of the act; for it checked a little example of a trial of
strength that he had thought of exhibiting to an armed damsel.

'Shall I pick it up for you?' he said.

'You will oblige me,' was her answer; but she could not control a
convulsion of her underlip that her defensive instinct told her was best
hidden.

'Of course, you know you are safe,' he repeated her previous words, while
examining the silver handle of the dagger. 'Safe? certainly! Here is C.
A. to V. . . . A. neatly engraved: a gift; so that the young gentleman
may be sure the young lady will defend herself from lions and tigers and
wild boars, if ever she goes through forests and over mountain passes. I
will not obtrude my curiosity, but who is V . . . . A. ?'

The dagger was Carlo's gift to her; the engraver, by singular
misadventure, had put a capital letter for the concluding letter of her
name instead of little a; she remembered the blush on Carlo's face when
she had drawn his attention to the error, and her own blush when she had
guessed its meaning.

'It spells my name,' she said.

'Your assumed name of Vittoria. And who is C. A.?'

'Those are the initials of Count Carlo Ammiani.'

'Another lover?'

'He is my sole lover. He is my betrothed. Oh, good God!' she threw her
eyes up to heaven; 'how long am I to endure the torture of this man in my
pathway? Go, sir, or let me go on. You are intolerable. It 's the spirit
of a tiger. I have no fear of you.'

'Nay, nay,' said Weisspriess, 'I asked the question because I am unde