ave been but for Vittoria's madness. The overture was coming to
an end. By tightening his arms across his chest he gained some outward
composure, and fixed his eyes upon the stage.

While sitting with Laura Piaveni and Merthyr Powys, Ammiani saw the
apparition of Captain Weisspriess in his mother's box. He forgot her
injunction, and hurried to her side, leaving the doors open. His passion
of anger spurned her admonishing grasp of his arm, and with his glove
he smote the Austrian officer on the face. Weisspriess plucked his sword
out; the house rose; there was a moment like that of a wild beast's
show of teeth. It passed: Captain Weisspriess withdrew in obedience to
General Pierson's command. The latter wrote on a slip of paper that two
pieces of artillery should be placed in position, and a squad of men
about the doors: he handed it out to Weisspriess.

'I hope,' the General said to Carlo, 'we shall be able to arrange things
for you without the interposition of the authorities.'

Carlo rejoined, 'General, he has the blood of our family on his hands. I
am ready.'

The General bowed. He glanced at the countess for a sign of maternal
weakness, saw none, and understood that a duel was down in the morrow's
bill of entertainments, as well as a riot possibly before dawn. The
house had revealed its temper in that short outburst, as a quivering of
quick lightning-flame betrays the forehead of the storm.

Countess Ammiani bade her son make fast the outer door. Her sedate
energies could barely control her agitation. In helping Angelo
Guidascarpi to evade the law, she had imperilled her son and herself.
Many of the Bolognese sbirri were in pursuit of Angelo. Some knew his
person; some did not; but if those two before whom she had identified
Angelo as being her son Carlo chanced now to be in the house, and to
have seen him, and heard his name, the risks were great and various.

'Do you know that handsome young Count Ammiani?' Countess Lena said to
Wilfrid. 'Perhaps you do not think him handsome? He was for a short time
a play-fellow of mine. He is more passionate than I am, and that does
not say a little; I warn you! Look how excited he is. No wonder. He
is--everybody knows it--he is la Vittoria's lover.'

Countess Lena uttered that sentence in Italian. The soft tongue sent it
like a coiling serpent through Wilfrid's veins. In English or in German
it would not have possessed the deadly meaning.

She may have done it purposel