ew friends, and she could hear
Angelo talking in the adjoining room. A conveyance was ready to take her
on to Bormio. A woman came to her to tell her this, appearing to have
a dull desire to get her gone. She was a draggled woman, with a face of
slothful anguish, like one of the inner spectres of a guilty man. She
said that her husband was willing to drive the lady to Bormio for a sum
that was to be paid at once into his wife's hand; and little enough
it was which poor persons could ever look for from your patriots and
disturbers who seduced orderly men from their labour, and made widows
and ruined households. This was a new Italian language to Vittoria,
and when the woman went on giving instances of households ruined by a
husband's vile infatuation about his country, she did not attempt to
defend the reckless lord, but dressed quickly that she might leave the
house as soon as she could. Her stock of money barely satisfied the
woman's demand. The woman seized it, and secreted it in her girdle.
When they had passed into the sitting-room, her husband, who was sitting
conversing with Angelo, stretched out his hand and knocked the girdle.

'That's our trick,' he said. 'I guessed so. Fund up, our little Maria of
the dirty fingers'-ends! We accept no money from true patriots. Grub in
other ground, my dear!'

The woman stretched her throat awry, and set up a howl like a dog; but
her claws came out when he seized her.

'Would you disgrace me, old fowl?'

'Lorenzo, may you rot like a pumpkin!'

The connubial reciprocities were sharp until the money lay on the table,
when the woman began whining so miserably that Vittoria's sensitive
nerves danced on her face, and at her authoritative interposition,
Lorenzo very reluctantly permitted his wife to take what he chose to
reckon a fair portion of the money, and also of his contempt. She seemed
to be licking the money up, she bent over it so greedily.

'Poor wretch!' he observed; 'she was born on a hired bed.'

Vittoria felt that the recollection of this woman would haunt her. It
was inconceivable to her that a handsome young man like Lorenzo should
ever have wedded the unsweet creature, who was like a crawling image of
decay; but he, as if to account for his taste, said that they had been
of a common age once, when he married her; now she had grown old. He
repeated that she 'was born on a hired bed.' They saw nothing further of
her.

Vittoria's desire was to get to Meran spee