It was difficult for Vittoria to speak upon the theme, which made her appear as a criminal replying to a charge. At last she said, 'English: I have no foreign friends but English. I remember nothing that I have done.--Yes, I have said I thought I might tremble if I was led out to be shot.'
'Pish! tush!' Laura checked her. 'They flog women, they do not shoot them. They shoot men.'
'That is our better fortune,' said Ammiani.
'But, Sandra, my sister,' Laura persisted now, in melodious coaxing tones. 'Can you not help us to guess? I am troubled: I am stung. It is for your sake I feel it so. Can't you imagine who did it, for instance?'
'No, signora, I cannot,' Vittoria replied.
'You will not!' said the irritable woman. 'Have you noticed no one passing near you?'
'A woman brushed by me as I entered this street. I remember no one else. And my Beppo seized a man who was spying on me, as he said. That is all I can remember.'
'Barto Rizzo has lived in England,' he remarked, half to himself. 'Did you come across a man called Barto Rizzo there, signorina? I suspect him to be the author of this.'
At the name of Barto Rizzo, Laura's eyes widened, awakening a memory in Ammiani; and her face had a spectral wanness.
'I must go to my chamber,' she said. 'Talk of it together. I will be with you soon.'
Ammiani bent over to Vittoria's ear. 'It was this man who sent the warning to Giacomo, the signora's husband, which he despised, and which would have saved him.
It is the only good thing I know of Barto Rizzo. Pardon her.'
'She has evidently a rooted superstitious faith in these revolutionary sign-marks. They are contagious to her. She loves you, and believes in you, and will kneel to you for forgiveness by-and-by. Her misery is a disease. She thinks now, “If my husband had given heed to the warning!”
'Yes, I see how her heart works,' said Vittoria. 'You knew her husband, Signor Carlo?'
'I knew him. I served under him. He was the brother of my love. I shall have no other.'
Vittoria placed her hand for Ammiani to take it. He joined his own to the fevered touch. The heart of the young man swelled most ungovernably, but the perils of the morrow were imaged by him, circling her as with a tragic flame, and he had no word for his passion.