the gateway; the cavalry cloak
was torn from his back, and but for the chance circumstance of his
swearing in English, he would have come to harm. A chill went through his
blood on hearing one of his assailants speak the name of Barto Rizzo. The
English oath stopped an arm that flashed a dagger half its length.
Wilfrid obeyed a command to declare his name, his country, and his rank.
"It's not the prince! it's not the Hungarian!" went many whispers; and he
was drawn away by a man who requested him to deliver his reasons for
entering the palace, and who appeared satisfied by Wilfrid's ready
mixture of invention and fact. But the cloak! Wilfrid stated boldly that
the cloak was taken by him from the Duchess of Graatli's at Como; that he
had seen a tall Hussar officer slip it off his shoulders; that he had
wanted a cloak, and had appropriated it. He had entered the gate of the
palace because of a woman's hand that plucked at the skirts of this very
cloak.

"I saw you enter," said the man; "do that no more. We will not have the
blood of Italy contaminated--do you hear? While that half-Austrian Medole
is tip-toeing 'twixt Milan and Turin, we watch over his honour, to set an
example to our women and your officers. You have outwitted us to-night.
Off with you!"

Wilfrid was twirled and pushed through the crowd till he got free of
them. He understood very well that they were magnanimous rascals who
could let an accomplice go, though they would have driven steel into the
principal.

Nothing came of this adventure for some time. Wilfrid's reflections
(apart from the horrible hard truth of Vittoria's marriage, against which
he dashed his heart perpetually, almost asking for anguish) had leisure
to examine the singularity of his feeling a commencement of pride in the
clasping of his musket;--he who on the first day of his degradation had
planned schemes to stick the bayonet-point between his breast-bones: he
thought as well of the queer woman's way in Countess Medole's adjuration
to him that he should never love a married woman;--in her speaking, as it
seemed, on his behalf, when it was but an outcry of her own acute wound.
Did he love a married woman? He wanted to see one married woman for the
last time; to throw a frightful look on her; to be sublime in scorn of
her; perhaps to love her all the better for the cruel pain, in the
expectation of being consoled. While doing duty as a military machine,
these were the pictures in his