nly to say, 'I am ready,' which was then the case. You
made your summer and left the fruits to hang, and now you are astounded
that seasons pass and fruits drop. You should have come to this place,
if but for a pair of days, and so have fixed one matter in the chapter.
This is how the chapter has run on. I see I talk to a stunned head; you
are thinking that Carlo's love for you can't have changed: and it has
not, but occasion has gone and times have changed. Now listen. The
countess desired the marriage. Carlo could not go to you in Milan with
the sword in his hand. Therefore you had to come to him. He waited for
you, perhaps for his own preposterous lover's sake as much as to make
his mother's heart easy. If she loses him she loses everything, unless
he leaves a wife to her care and the hope that her House will not be
extinct, which is possibly not much more the weakness of old aristocracy
than of human nature.

"Meantime, his brothers in arms had broken up and entered Piedmont,
and he remained waiting for you still. You are thinking that he had
not waited a month. But if four months finished Lombardy, less than one
month is quite sufficient to do the same for us little beings. He met
the Countess d'Isorella here. You have to thank her for seeing him at
all, so don't wrinkle your forehead yet. Luciano Romara is drilling
his men in Piedmont; Angelo Guidascarpi has gone there. Carlo was
considering it his duty to join Luciano, when he met this lady, and she
has apparently succeeded in altering his plans. Luciano and his band
will go to Rome. Carlo fancies that another blow will be struck for
Lombardy. This lady should know; the point is, whether she can be
trusted. She persists in declaring that Carlo's duty is to remain,
and--I cannot tell how, for I am as a child among women--she has
persuaded him of her sincerity. Favour me now with your clearest
understanding, and deliver it from feminine sensations of any
description for just two minutes."

Agostino threw away the end of a cigarette and looked for firmness in
Vittoria's eyes.

"This Countess d'Isorella is opposed to Carlo's marriage at present. She
says that she is betraying the king's secrets, and has no reliance on
a woman. As a woman you will pardon her, for it is the language of your
sex. You are also denounced by Barto Rizzo, a madman--he went mad as
fire, and had to be chained at Varese. In some way or other Countess
d'Isorella got possession of him; she ha