the woman he has married? None! and
yet, what have I done!" Anna smote her forehead. "They are nothing but
little dots on a field for me. I don't care whether they live or die.
It's like a thing done in sleep."

"I want to know what you have done," said Lena caressingly.

"You at least will try to reward our truest hero, and make up to him for
your sister's unkindness, will you not?" Anna replied with a cajolery
wonderfully like a sincere expression of her wishes. "He will be a good
husband.. He has proved it by having been so faithful a--a lover. So you
may be sure of him. And when he is yours, do not let him fight again,
Lena, for I have a sickening presentiment that his next duel is his
last."

"Tell me," Lena entreated her, "pray tell me what horrible thing you have
done to prevent your marrying him."

"With their pride and their laughter," Anna made answer; "the fools! were
they to sting us perpetually and not suffer for it? That woman, the
Countess Alessandra, as she's now called--have you forgotten that she
helped our Paul's assassin to escape? was she not eternally plotting
against Austria? And I say that I love Austria. I love my country; I plot
for my country. She and her husband plot, and I plot to thwart them. I
have ruined myself in doing it. Oh, my heart! why has it commenced
beating again? Why did Weisspriess come here? He offended me. He refused
to do my orders, and left me empty-handed, and if he suffers too," Anna
relieved a hard look with a smile of melancholy, "I hope he will not; I
cannot say more."

"And I'm to console him if he does?" said Lena.

"At least, I shall be out of the way," said Anna. "I have still money
enough to make me welcome in a convent."

"I am to marry him?" Lena persisted, and half induced Anna to act a
feeble part, composed of sobs and kisses and full confession of her
plight. Anna broke from her in time to leave what she had stated of
herself vague and self-justificatory, so that she kept her pride, and
could forgive, as she was ready to do even so far as to ask forgiveness
in turn, when with her awakened enamoured heart she heard Vittoria sing
at the concert of Pericles. Countess Alessandra's divine gift, which she
would not withhold, though in a misery of apprehension; her grave eyes,
which none could accuse of coldness, though they showed no emotion; her
simple noble manner that seemed to lift her up among the forces
threatening her; these expressions of a superio