“I acknowledge that I love and serve my country, Lena.”

“Not with a pure heart:  you can’t forgive.  Insult or a wrong makes a madwoman of you.  Confess, Anna!  You know well that you can’t kneel to a priest’s ear, for you’ve stopped your conscience.  You have pledged yourself to misery to satisfy a spite, and you have not the courage to ask for—­” Lena broke her speech like one whose wits have been kindled.  “Yes, Karl,” she resumed; “Anna begged you to help her.  You will.  Take her aside and save her from being miserable forever.  You do mean to fight my Wilfrid?”

“I am certainly determined to bring him to repentance leaving him the option of the way,” said Karl.

Lena took her sullen sister by the arm.

“Anna, will you let these two men go—­to slaughter?  Look at them; they are both our brothers.  One is dearer than a brother to me, and, oh God!  I have known what it is to half-lose him.  You to lose a lover and have to go bound by a wretched oath to be the wife of a detestable short-sighted husband!  Oh, what an abominable folly!”

This epithet, ‘short-sighted,’ curiously forced in by Lena, was like a shock of the very image of Nagen’s needle features thrust against Anna’s eyes; the spasm of revulsion in her frame was too quick for her habitual self-control.

At that juncture Weisspriess opened the door, and Anna’s eyes met his.

“You don’t spare me,” she murmured to Lena.

Her voice trembled, and Wilfrid bent his head near her, pressing her hand, and said, “Not only I, but Countess Alessandra Ammiani exonerates you from blame.  As she loves her country, you love yours.  My words to Karl were an exaggeration of what I know and think.  Only tell me this; —­if Nagen captures Count Ammiani, how is he likely to deal with him?”

“How can I inform you?” Anna replied coldly; but she reflected in a fire of terror.  She had given Nagen the prompting of a hundred angry exclamations in the days of her fever of hatred; she had nevertheless forgotten their parting words; that is, she had forgotten her mood when he started for Brescia, and the nature of the last instructions she had given him.  Revolting from the thought of execution being done upon Count Ammiani, as one quickly springing out of fever dreams, all her white face went into hard little lines, like the withered snow which wears away in frost.  “Yes,” she said; and again, “Yes,” to something Weisspriess whispered in her ear, she knew not clearly what.  Weisspriess told Wilfrid that he would wait below.  As he quitted the room, the duchess entered, and went up to Anna.  “My good soul,” she said, “you have, I trust, listened to Major Weisspriess.  Oh, Anna! you wanted revenge.  Now take it, as becomes a high-born woman; and let your enemy come to your feet, and don’t spurn her when she is there.  Must I inform you that I have been to Countess d’Isorella myself with a man who can compel her to speak?  But Anna