Count Serabiglione produced a martyr's smile.
“The profits of my expected posts will be,” he was saying, with a reckoning eye cast upward into his cranium for accuracy, when Laura returned, and Vittoria ran out to the duchess. Amalia repeated Irma's tattle. A curious little twitching of the brows at Violetta d'Isorella's name marked the reception of it.
“She is most lovely,” Vittoria said.
“And absolutely reckless.”
“She is an old friend of Count Ammiani's.”
“And you have an old friend here. But the old friend of a young woman—I need not say further than that it is different.”
The duchess used the privilege of her affection, and urged Vittoria not to trifle with her lover's impatience.
Admitted to the chamber where Merthyr lay, she was enabled to make allowance for her irresolution. The face of the wounded man was like a lake-water taking light from Vittoria's presence.
“This may go on for weeks,” she said to Laura.
Three days later, Vittoria received an order from the Government to quit the city within a prescribed number of hours, and her brain was racked to discover why Laura appeared so little indignant at the barbarous act of despotism. Laura undertook to break the bad news to Merthyr. The parting was as quiet and cheerful as, in the opposite degree, Vittoria had thought it would be melancholy and regretful. “What a Government!” Merthyr said, and told her to let him hear of any changes. “All changes that please my friends please me.”