flung himself on the box and shouted, 'The signorina is behind you!'
And Ammiani beheld Vittoria standing in alarm, too joyful to know that
it was she. In the spasm of joy he kissed her hands. Before they could
intercommunicate intelligibly the carriage was out of their sight, going
at a gallop along the eastern strada of the circumvallation of the city.




CHAPTER XV

AMMIANI THROUGH THE MIDNIGHT

Ammiani hurried Vittoria out of the street to make safety sure. 'Home,'
she said, ashamed of her excitement, and not daring to speak more words,
lest the heart in her throat should betray itself. He saw what the
fright had done for her. Perhaps also he guessed that she was trying to
conceal her fancied cowardice from him. 'I have kissed her hands,' he
thought, and the memory of it was a song of tenderness in his blood by
the way.

Vittoria's dwelling-place was near the Duomo, in a narrow thoroughfare
leading from the Duomo to the Piazza of La Scala, where a confectioner of
local fame conferred upon the happier members of the population most
piquant bocconi and tartlets, and offered by placard to give an emotion
to the nobility, the literati, and the epicures of Milan, and to all
foreigners, if the aforesaid would adventure upon a trial of his art.
Meanwhile he let lodgings. It was in the house of this famous
confectioner Zotti that Vittoria and her mother had lived after leaving
England for Italy. As Vittoria came under the fretted shadow of the