a sombre
conquering monotony on a low chord, with which she felt insufficient to
compete.

Leone was waiting in the carriage to drive to the ferry across the Adige.
There was news in Roveredo of the king's advance upon Rivoli; and Leone
sat trying to lift and straighten out his wounded arm, with grimaces of
laughter at the pain of the effort, which resolutely refused to
acknowledge him to be an able combatant. At the carriage-door Wilfrid
bowed once over Vittoria's hand.

"You see that," Anna remarked to her sister.

"I should have despised him if he had acted indifference," replied Lena.

She would have suspected him--that was what her heart meant; the artful
show of indifference had deceived her once. The anger within her drew its
springs much more fully from his refusal to respond to her affection,
when she had in a fit of feminine weakness abased herself before him on
the night of the Milanese revolt, than from the recollection of their
days together in Meran. She had nothing of her sister's unforgivingness.
And she was besides keenly curious to discover the nature of the charm
Vittoria threw on him, and not on him solely. Vittoria left Wilfrid to
better chances than she supposed. "Continue fighting with your army," she
said, when they parted. The deeper shade which traversed his features
told her that, if she pleased, her sway might still be active; but she
had no emotion to spare for sentimental regrets. She asked herself
whether a woman who has cast her lot in scenes of strife does not lose
much of her womanhood and something of her truth; and while her
imagination remained depressed, her answer was sad. In that mood she
pitied Wilfrid with a reckless sense of her inability to repay him for
the harm she had done him. The tragedies written in fresh blood all about
her, together with that ever-present image of the fate of Italy hanging
in the balance, drew her away from personal reflections. She felt as one
in a war-chariot, who has not time to cast more than a glance on the
fallen. At the place where the ferry is, she was rejoiced by hearing
positive news of the proximity of the Royal army. There were none to tell
her that Charles Albert had here made his worst move by leaving Vicenza
to the operations of the enemy, that he might become master of a point
worthless when Vicenza fell into the enemy's hands. The old Austrian
Field-Marshal had eluded him at Mantua on that very night when Vittoria
had seen his tro