To-morrow, very early in the morning, she was to leave Venice for Trieste,—so early that it would be necessary that she should be on board this very night.
“My child,” said the Signora, “do not say so; you will never cease to be Italian. Surely, Hubert, she may still call herself Venetian?”
“Mother,” she said, “I love a losing cause. I will be Austrian now. I told him that he could not have both. If he kept his Venice, he could not have me; but as he has lost his province, he shall have his wife entirely.”
“I told him that it was fated that he should lose Venetia,” said Carlo, “but he would never believe me.”
“Because I knew how true were our soldiers,” said Hubert, “and could not understand how false were our statesmen.”
“See how he regrets it,” said Nina; “what he has lost, and what he has won, will, together, break his heart for him.”
“Nina,” he said, “I learned this morning in the city, that I shall be the last Austrian soldier to leave Venice, and I hold that of all who have entered it, and all who have left it, I am the most successful and the most triumphant.”
