re his sensations,
was Wilfrid unaware of the contrast of Vittoria's soul to his own, that
was now made up of antics. He could not endure the tones of cathedral
music; but he had at times to kneel and listen to it, and be overcome.

On a night in the month of February, a servant out of livery addressed
him at the barrack-gates, requesting him to go at once to a certain
hotel, where his sister was staying. He went, and found there, not his
sister, but Countess Medole. She smiled at his confusion. Both she and
the prince, she said, had spared no effort to get him reinstated in his
rank; but his uncle continually opposed the endeavours of all his friends
to serve him. This interview was dictated by the prince's wish, so that
he might know them to be a not ungrateful couple. Wilfrid's embarrassment
in standing before a lady in private soldier's uniform, enabled him with
very peculiar dignity to declare that his present degradation, from the
General's point of view, was a just punishment, and he did not crave to
have it abated. She remarked that it must end soon. He made a dim
allusion to the littleness of humanity. She laughed. "It's the language
of an unfortunate lover," she said, and straightway, in some
undistinguished sentence, brought the name of Countess Alessandra Ammiani
tingling to his ears. She feared that she could not be of service to him
there; "at least, not just yet," the lady astonished him by remarking. "I
might help you to see her. If you take my advice you will wait patiently.
You know us well enough to understand what patience will do. She is
supposed to have married for love. Whether she did or not, you must allow
a young married woman two years' grace."

The effect of speech like this, and more in a similar strain of frank
corruptness, was to cleanse Wilfrid's mind, and nerve his heart, and he
denied that he had any desire to meet the Countess Ammiani, unless he
could perform a service that would be agreeable to her.

The lady shrugged. "Well, that is one way. She has enemies, of course."

Wilfrid begged for their names.

"Who are they not?" she replied. "Chiefly women, it is true."

He begged most earnestly for their names; he would have pleaded
eloquently, but dreaded that the intonation of one in his low garb might
be taken for a whine; yet he ventured to say that if the countess did
imagine herself indebted to him in a small degree, the mention of two or
three of the names of Countess Alessand