"What does this mean? Is it insolence? Have the kindness, if you please, not to address me in enigmas. Do you"—Anna was deadly pale as she turned the cigarcase from side to side—"do you imagine that I smoke, 'par hasard?'" She tried to laugh off her intemperate manner of speech; the laugh broke at sight of a blood-mark on one corner of the case; she started and said earnestly, "I beg you to let me hear what the meaning of this may be?"
"He lies in the Ultenthal, wounded; and his wish was that I should deliver it to you." Vittoria spoke as gently as the harsh tidings would allow.
"Wounded? My God! my God!" Anna cried in her own language. "Wounded?- in the breast, then! He carried it in his breast. Wounded by what? by what?"
"I can tell you no more."
"Wounded by whom?"
"It was an honourable duel."
"Are you afraid to tell me he has been assassinated?"
"It was an honourable duel."
"None could match him with the sword."
"His enemy had nothing but a dagger."