The Signora Piaveni had walked to the window.  This antiquated fussiness of the dilettante little nobleman was sickening to her.

’Probably you expect to discover a revolutionary symbol in the lines of the signorina’s dress,’ she said.

‘A revolutionary symbol!—­my dear! my dear!’ The count reproved his daughter.  ’Is not our signorina a pure artist, accomplishing easily three octaves? aha!  Three!’ and he rubbed his hands.  ’But, three good octaves!’ he addressed Vittoria seriously and admonishingly.  ’It is a fortune-millions!  It is precisely the very grandest heritage!  It is an army!’

‘I trust that it may be!’ said Vittoria, with so deep and earnest a ring of her voice that the count himself, malicious as his ejaculations had been, was astonished.  At that instant Laura cried from the window:  ‘These horses will go mad.’

The exclamation had the desired effect.

‘Eh?—­pardon me, signorina,’ said the count, moving half-way to the window, and then askant for his hat.  The clatter of the horses’ hoofs sent him dashing through the doorway, at which place his daughter stood with his hat extended.  He thanked and blessed her for the kindly attention, and in terror lest the signorina should think evil of him as ‘one of the generation of the hasty,’ he said, ’Were it anything but horses! anything but horses! one’s horses!—­ha!’ The audible hoofs called him off.  He kissed the tips of his fingers, and tripped out.

The signora stepped rapidly to the window, and leaning there, cried a word to the coachman, who signalled perfect comprehension, and immediately the count’s horses were on their hind-legs, chafing and pulling to right and left, and the street was tumultuous with them.  She flung down the window, seized Vittoria’s cheeks in her two hands, and pressed the head upon her bosom.  ‘He will not disturb us again,’ she said, in quite a new tone, sliding her hands from the cheeks to the shoulders and along the arms to the fingers’-ends, which they clutched lovingly.  ’He is of the old school, friend of my heart! and besides, he has but two pairs of horses, and one he keeps in Vienna.  We live in the hope that our masters will pay us better!  Tell me! you are in good health?  All is well with you?  Will they have to put paint on her soft cheeks to-morrow?  Little, if they hold the colour as full as now?  My Sandra! amica! should I have been jealous if Giacomo had known you?  On my soul, I cannot guess!  But, you love what he loved.  He seems to live for me when they are talking of Italy, and you send your eyes forward as if you saw the country free.  God help me! how I have been containing myself for the last hour and a half!’

The signora dropped in a seat and laughed a languid laugh.

’The little ones?  I will ring for them.  Assunta shall bring them down in their night-gowns if they are undressed; and we will muffle the windows, for my little man will be wanting his song; and did you not promise him the great one which is to raise Italy-his mother, from the dead?  Do you remember our little fellow’s eyes as he tried to see the picture?  I fear I force him too much, and there’s no need-not a bit.’