circumstances of court life, and the need of at once commanding respect
and disarming diffidence.

He took leave upon his last words, declaring, in reply to the Countess's
protests, that he had promised to accompany the court that afternoon to
Stupinigi. "But I hope," he added, turning to Odo, "to continue our talk
at greater length, if you will favour me with a visit tomorrow at my
lodgings."

No sooner was the door closed on her illustrious visitor than Donna
Laura flung herself on Odo's bosom.

"I always knew it," she cried, "my dearest; but, oh, that I should live
to see the day!" and she wept and clung to him with a thousand
endearments, from the nature of which he gathered that she already
beheld him on the throne of Pianura. To his laughing reminder of the
distance that still separated him from that dizzy eminence, she made
answer that there was far more than he knew, that the Duke had fallen
into all manner of excesses which had already gravely impaired his
health, and that for her part she only hoped her son, when raised to a
station so far above her own, would not forget the tenderness with which
she had ever cherished him, or the fact that Count Valdu's financial
situation was one quite unworthy the stepfather of a reigning prince.

Escaping at length from this parody of his own sensations, Odo found
himself in a tumult of mind that solitude served only to increase.
Events had so pressed upon him within the last few days that at times he
was reduced to a passive sense of spectatorship, an inability to regard
himself as the centre of so many converging purposes. It was clear that
Trescorre's mission was mainly a pretext for seeing the Duke's young