She corrected her ardour, half-exulting in finding herself carried so far and so swimmingly on a tide of truth, half wondering whether the flowering beauty of her face in excitement had struck his sensibility.  He was cold and speculative.

“Ah!” she said, “if I were to ask my compatriots to put faith in a woman’s pure friendship for a man, I should know the answer; but you, signor Powys, who have shown us that a man is capable of the purest friendship for a woman, should believe me.”

He led her down to the gates, where her coachman sat muffled in a three-quarter sleep.  The word was given to drive to her own house; rejoiced by which she called his attention deploringly to the condition of her horses, requesting him to say whether he could imagine them the best English, and confessing with regret, that she killed three sets a year—­ loved them well, notwithstanding.  Merthyr saw enough of her to feel that she was one of the weak creatures who are strong through our greater weakness; and, either by intuition or quick wit, too lively and too subtle to be caught by simple suspicion.  She even divined that reflection might tell him she had evaded him by an artifice—­a piece of gross cajolery; and said, laughing:  “Concerning friendship, I could offer it to a boy, like Carlo Ammiani; not to you, signor Powys.  I know that I must check a youth, and I am on my guard.  I should be eternally tormented to discover whether your armour was proof.”

“I dare say that a lady who had those torments would soon be able to make them mine,” said Merthyr.

“You could not pay a fairer compliment to some one else,” she remarked.  In truth, the candid personal avowal seemed to her to hold up Vittoria’s sacred honour in a crystal, and the more she thought of it, the more she respected him, for his shrewd intelligence, if not for his sincerity; but on the whole she fancied him a loyal friend, not solely a clever maker of phrases; and she was pleased with herself for thinking such a matter possible, in spite of her education.

“I do most solemnly hope that you may not have to sustain Countess Alessandra under any affliction whatsoever,” she said at parting.

Violetta had escaped an exposure—­a rank and naked accusation of her character and deeds.  She feared nothing but that, being quite indifferent to opinion; a woman who would not have thought it preternaturally sad to have to walk as a penitent in the streets, with the provision of a very thick veil to cover her.  She had escaped, but the moment she felt herself free, she was surprised by a sharp twinge of remorse.  She summoned her maid to undress her, and smelt her favourite perfume, and lay in her bed, to complete her period of rest, closing her eyes there with a child’s faith in pillows.  Flying lights and blood-blotches rushed within a span of her forehead.  She met this symptom promptly with a medical receipt; yet she had no sleep; nor would coffee give her sleep.  She shrank from opium as deleterious to the constitution, and her mind settled on music as the remedy.