it
is sufficient testimony that Angelo Guidascarpi is in the neighbourhood.
I should be hunting him now but that I am under orders to march
South-east."

The story, as Vittoria knew it, had a different, though yet a dreadful,
colour.

"I could have hanged Rinaldo," Count Karl said further. "I suppose the
rascals feared I should use my right, and that is why they sent their mad
baggage of a woman to spare any damage to the family pride. If I had been
a man to enjoy vengeance, the rope would have swung for him. In spite of
provocation, I shall simply shoot the other; I pledge my word to it. They
shall be paid in coin. I demand no interest."

Weisspriess prudently avoided her. Wilfrid held aloof. She sat in garden
shade till the bugle sounded. Tyrolese and Italian soldiers were gibing
at her haggard companion when she entered the carriage. Fronting this
dumb creature once more, Vittoria thought of the story of the brothers.
She felt herself reading it from the very page. The woman looked that
evil star incarnate which Laura said they were born under.

This is in brief the story of the Guidascarpi.

They were the offspring of a Bolognese noble house, neither wealthy nor
poor. In her early womanhood, Clelia was left to the care of her
brothers. She declined the guardianship of Countess Ammiani because of
her love for them; and the three, with their passion of hatred to the
Austrians inherited from father and mother, schemed in concert to throw
off the Austrian yoke. Clelia had soft features of no great mark; by her
colouring she was beautiful, being dark along the eyebrows, with dark
eyes, and a surpassing richness of Venetian hair. Bologna and Venice were
married in her aspect. Her brothers conceived her to possess such force
of mind that they held no secrets from her. They did not know that the
heart of their sister was struggling with an image of Power when she
uttered hatred of it. She was in truth a woman of a soft heart, with a
most impressionable imagination.

There were many suitors for the hand of Clelia Guidascarpi, though her
dowry was not the portion of a fat estate. Her old nurse counselled the
brothers that they should consent to her taking a husband. They fulfilled
this duty as one that must be done, and she became sorrowfully the
betrothed of a nobleman of Bologna; from which hour she had no
cheerfulness. The brothers quitted Bologna for Venice, where there was
the bed of a conspiracy. On their return