nfessing that he was 'for some reasons' in high favour with
Countess Lena, he added that after a long struggle he had brought her to
confess that her sister had sworn to have Countess Alessandra Ammiani
begging at her feet.

By mutual consent they went to consult the duchess. She repelled the
notion of Austrian women conspiring. "An Austrian noble lady--do you
think it possible that she would act secretly to serve a private hatred?
Surely I may ask you, for my sake, to think better of us?"

Merthyr showed her an opening to his ground by suggesting that Anna's
antipathy to Victoria might spring more from a patriotic than a private
source.

"Oh! I will certainly make inquiries, if only to save Anna's reputation
with her enemies," the duchess answered rather proudly.

It would have been a Novara to Pericles if Vittoria had refused to sing.
He held the pecuniarily-embarrassed duchess sufficiently in his power to
command a concert at her house; his argument to those who pressed him to
spare Vittoria in a season of grief running seriously, with visible
contempt of their intellects, thus: "A great voice is an ocean. You
cannot drain it with forty dozen opera-hats. It is something found--an
addition to the wealth of this life. Shall we not enjoy what we find? You
do not wear out a picture by looking at it; likewise you do not wear out
a voice by listening to it. A bird has wings;--here is a voice. Why were
they given? I should say, to go into the air. Ah; but not if grandmother
is ill. What is a grandmother to the wings and the voice? If to sing
would kill,--yes, then let the puny thing be silent! But Sandra Belloni
has a soul that has not a husband--except her Art. Her body is husbanded;
but her soul is above her body. You would treat it as below. Art is her
soul's husband! Besides, I have her promise. She is a girl who will go up
to a loaded gun's muzzle if she gives her word. And besides, her husband
may be shot to-morrow. So, all she sings now is clear gain."

Vittoria sent word to him that she would sing.

In the meantime a change had come upon Countess Anna. Weisspriess, her
hero, appeared at her brother's house, fresh from the field of Novara,
whither he had hurried from Verona on a bare pretext, that was a breach
of military discipline requiring friendly interposition in high quarters.
Unable to obtain an audience with Count Lenkenstein, he remained in the
hall, hoping for things which he affected to care nothing f