“Are you the signorina Campa, or Belloni, who is expected here?”
The Austrian character and colouring of her features told Vittoria that this must be the Countess Anna or her sister.
“I think I have been expected,” she replied.
“I am Countess Anna von Lenkenstein; one of the guests of the castle.”
Vittoria lifted the embroidered cigar-case. Countess Anna snatched it from her hand.
“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?”
“Are you afraid to tell me he has been assassinated?”
“It is no secret, but I must leave him to say.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Vittoria, “lose no time with me, Countess Anna, go to him at once, for though he lived when I left him, he was bleeding; I cannot say that he was not dying, and he has not a friend near.”
Anna murmured like one overborne by calamity. “My brother struck down one day--he the next!” She covered her face a moment, and unclosed it to explain that she wept for her brother, who had been murdered, stabbed in Bologna.
“Was it Count Ammiani who did this?” she asked passionately.
Vittoria shook her head; she was divining a dreadful thing in relation to the death of Count Paul.
“It was not?” said Anna. “They had a misunderstanding, I know. But you tell me the man fought with a dagger. It could not be Count Ammiani. The dagger is an assassin's weapon, and there are men of honour in Italy still.”
She called to a servant in the castle-yard, and sent him down with orders to stop the soldier Wilhelm.
“We heard this morning that you were coming, and we thought it curious,” she observed; and called again for her horse to be saddled. “How far is this place where he is lying? I have no knowledge of the Ultenthal. Has he a doctor attending him? When was he wounded? It is but common humanity to see that he is attended by an efficient doctor. My nerves are unstrung by the recent blow to our family; that is why--Oh, my father! my holy father!” she turned to a grey priest's head that was rising up the ascent, “I thank God for you! Lena is away riding; she weeps constantly when she is within four walls. Come in and give me tears, if you can; I am half mad for the want of them. Tears first; teach me patience after.”