Carlo thanked heaven that Violetta had no passion in her nature.  She had none:  merely a leaning toward evil, a light sense of shame, a desire for money, and in her heart a contempt for the principles she did not possess, but which, apart from the intervention of other influences, could occasionally sway her actions.  Friendship, or rather the shadowy recovery of a past attachment that had been more than friendship, inclined her now and then to serve a master who failed distinctly to represent her interests; and when she met Carlo after the close of the war, she had really set to work in hearty kindliness to rescue him from what she termed “shipwreck with that disastrous Republican crew.”  He had obtained greater ascendency over her than she liked; yet she would have forgiven it, as well as her consequent slight deviation from direct allegiance to her masters in various cities, but for Carlo’s commanding personal coolness.  She who had tamed a madman by her beauty, was outraged, and not unnaturally, by the indifference of a former lover.

Later in the day, Laura and Vittoria, with Agostino, reached the villa; and Adela put her lips to Vittoria’s ear, whispering:  “Naughty! when are you to lose your liberty to turn men’s heads?” and then she heaved a sigh with Wilfrid’s name.  She had formed the acquaintance of Countess d’Isorella in Turin, she said, and satisfactorily repeated her lesson, but with a blush.  She was little more than a shade to Vittoria, who wondered what she had to live for.  After the early evening dinner, when sunlight and the colours of the sun were beyond the western mountains, they pushed out on the lake.  A moon was overhead, seeming to drop lower on them as she filled with light.

Agostino and Vittoria fell upon their theme of discord, as usual—­the King of Sardinia.

“We near the vesper hour, my daughter,” said Agostino; “you would provoke me to argumentation in heaven itself.  I am for peace.  I remember looking down on two cats with arched backs in the solitary arena of the Verona amphitheatre.  We men, my Carlo, will not, in the decay of time, so conduct ourselves.”

Vittoria looked on Laura and thought of the cannon-sounding hours, whose echoes rolled over their slaughtered hope.  The sun fell, the moon shone, and the sun would rise again, but Italy lay face to earth.  They had seen her together before the enemy.  That recollection was a joy that stood, though the winds beat at it, and the torrents.  She loved her friend’s worn eyelids and softly-shut mouth; the after-glow of battle seemed on them; the silence of the field of carnage under heaven;—­and the patient turning of Laura’s eyes this way and that to speakers upon common things, covered the despair of her heart as with a soldier’s cloak.

Laura met the tender study of Vittoria’s look, and smiled.

They neared the Villa Ricciardi, and heard singing.  The villa was lighted profusely, so that it made a little mock-sunset on the lake.