Vittoria — Complete by George Meredith (e novels for free .TXT) 📕

to a detested child. Countess Ammiani saw the abrupt alteration of her step and look with a dim surprise. “What do you conceal from me?” she asked, and supplied the answer by charitably attributing it to news that the signora Piaveni was coming.

When Laura came, the countess thanked her, saying, “I am a wretched companion for this boiling head.”

Laura soon proved to her that she had been the best, for after very few hours Vittoria was looking like the Hagar on the canvas.

A woman such as Violetta d'Isorella was of the sort from which Laura shrank with all her feminine power of loathing; but she spoke of her with some effort at personal tolerance until she heard of Violetta's stipulation for the deferring of Carlo's marriage, and contrived to guess that Carlo was reserved and unfamiliar with his betrothed. Then she cried out, “Fool that he is! Is it ever possible to come to the end of the folly of men? She has inflamed his vanity. She met him when you were holding him waiting, and no doubt she commenced with lamentations over the country, followed by a sigh, a fixed look, a cheerful air, and the assurance to him that she knew it—uttered as if through the keyhole of the royal cabinet—she knew that Sardinia would break the Salasco armistice in a mouth:—if only, if the king could be sure of support from the youth of Lombardy.”

“Do you suspect the unhappy king?” Vittoria interposed.

“Grasp your colours tight,” said Laura, nodding sarcastic approbation of such fidelity, and smiling slightly. “There has been no mention of the king. Countess d'Isorella is a spy and a tool of the Jesuits, taking pay from all parties—Austria as well, I would swear. Their object is to paralyze the march on Rome, and she has won Carlo for them. I am told that Barto Rizzo is another of her conquests. Thus she has a madman and a fool, and what may not be done with a madman and a fool? However, I have set a watch on her. She must have inflamed Carlo's vanity. He has it, just as they all have. There's trickery: I would rather behold the boy charging at the head of a column than putting faith in this base creature. She must have simulated well,” Laura went on talking to herself.

“What trickery?” said Vittoria.

“He was in love with the woman when he was a lad,” Laura replied, and pertinently to Vittoria's feelings. This threw the moist shade across her features.

Beppo in Turin and Luigi on the lake were the watch set on Countess d'Isorella; they were useless except to fortify Laura's suspicions. The Duchess of Graatli wrote mere gossip from Milan. She mentioned that Anna of Lenkenstein had visited with her the tomb of her brother Count Paul at Bologna, and had returned in double mourning; and that Madame Sedley—“the sister of our poor ruined Pierson”—had obtained grace, for herself at least, from Anna, by casting herself at Anna's feet,—and that they were now friends.

Vittoria felt ashamed of Adela.

When Carlo returned, the signora attacked him boldly with all her weapons; reproached him; said, “Would my husband have treated me in such a manner?” Carlo twisted his moustache and stroked his young beard for patience. They passed from room to balcony and terrace, and Laura brought him back into company without cessation of her fire of questions and sarcasms, saying, “No, no; we will speak of these things publicly.” She appealed alternately to Agostino, Vittoria, and Countess Ammiani for support, and as she certainly spoke sense, Carlo was reduced to gloom and silence. Laura then paused. “Surely you have punished your bride enough?” she said; and more softly, “Brother of my Giacomo! you are under an evil spell.”

Carlo started up in anger. Bending to Vittoria, he offered her his hand to lead her out, They went together.

“A good sign,” said the countess.

“A bad sign!” Laura sighed. “If he had taken me out for explanation! But tell me, my Agostino, are you the woman's dupe?”

“I have been,” Agostino admitted frankly.

“You did really put faith in her?”

“She condescends to be so excessively charming.”

“You could not advance a better reason.”

“It is one of our best; perhaps our very best, where your sex is concerned, signora.”

“You are her dupe no more?”

“No more. Oh, dear no!”

“You understand her now, do you?”

“For the very reason, signora, that I have been her dupe. That is, I am beginning to understand her. I am not yet in possession of the key.”

“Not yet in possession!” said Laura contemptuously; “but, never mind. Now for Carlo.”

“Now for Carlo. He declares that he never has been deceived by her.”

“He is perilously vain,” sighed the signora.

“Seriously”—Agostino drew out the length of his beard—“I do not suppose that he has been—boys, you know, are so acute. He fancies he can make her of service, and he shows some skill.”

“The skill of a fish to get into the net!”

“My dearest signora, you do not allow for the times. I remember”—Agostino peered upward through his eyelashes in a way that he had—“I remember seeing in a meadow a gossamer running away with a spider-thread. It was against all calculation. But, observe: there were exterior agencies at work: a stout wind blew. The ordinary reckoning is based on calms. Without the operation of disturbing elements, the spider-thread would have gently detained the gossamer.”

“Is that meant for my son?” Countess Ammiani asked slowly, with incredulous emphasis.

Agostino and Laura, laughing in their hearts at the mother's mysterious veneration for Carlo, had to explain that 'gossamer' was a poetic, generic term, to embrace the lighter qualities of masculine youth.

A woman's figure passed swiftly by the window, which led Laura to suppose that the couple outside had parted. She ran forth, calling to one of them, but they came hand in hand, declaring that they had seen neither woman nor man. “And I am happy,” Vittoria whispered. She looked happy, pale though she was.

“It is only my dreadful longing for rest which makes me pale,” she said to Laura, when they were alone. “Carlo has proved to me that he is wiser than I am.”

“A proof that you love Carlo, perhaps,” Laura rejoined.

“Dearest, he speaks more gently of the king.”

“It may be cunning, or it may be carelessness.”

“Will nothing satisfy you, wilful sceptic? He is quite alive to the Countess d'Isorella's character. He told me how she dazzled him once.”

“Not how she has entangled him now?”

“It is not true. He told me what I should like to dream over without talking any more to anybody. Ah, what a delight! to have known him,