s concealed. Laura could give no advice; she
looked on Merthyr and Vittoria as two that had an incomprehensible
knowledge of the power of one another's natures, and the fiery creature
remained passive in perplexity of minds as soft an attendant as a
suffering woman could have:

Merthyr did not sleep, and in the morning Vittoria said to him, "You want
to be active, my friend. Go, and we will wait for you here. I know that I
am never deceived by you, and when I see you I know that the truth speaks
and bids me be worthy of it Go up there," she pointed with shut eyes at
the mountains; "leave me to pray for greater strength. I am among
Italians at this inn; and shall spend money here; the poor people love
it." She smiled a little, showing a glimpse of her old charitable humour.

Merthyr counselled Laura that in case of evil tidings during his absence
she should reject her feminine ideas of expediency, and believe that she
was speaking to a brave soul firmly rooted in the wisdom of heaven.

"Tell her?--she will die," said Laura, shuddering.

"Get tears from her," Merthyr rejoined; "but hide nothing from her for a
single instant; keep her in daylight. For God's sake, keep her in
daylight."

"It's too sharp a task for me." She repeated that she was incapable of
it.

"Ah," said he, "look at your Italy, how she weeps! and she has cause. She
would die in her grief, if she had no faith for what is to come. I dare
say it is not, save in the hearts of one or two, a conscious faith, but
it's real divine strength; and Alessandra Ammiani has it. Do as I bid
you. I return in two days."

Without understanding him, Laura promised that she would do her utmost to
obey, and he left her muttering to herself as if she were schooling her
lips to speak reluctant words. He started for the mountains with
gladdened limbs, taking a guide, who gave his name as Lorenzo, and talked
of having been 'out' in the previous year. "I am a patriot, signore! and
not only in opposition to my beast of a wife, I assure you: a downright
patriot, I mean." Merthyr was tempted to discharge him at first, but
controlled his English antipathy to babblers, and discovered him to be a
serviceable fellow. Toward nightfall they heard shots up a rock-strewn
combe of the lower slopes; desultory shots indicating rifle-firing at
long range. Darkness made them seek shelter in a pine-hut; starting from
which at dawn, Lorenzo ran beating about like a dog over the place where