name once, and I have had the honour to call you by it.'

'Are you an Austrian?' she exclaimed, and Carlo felt that she was
shrinking back.

'I am the Wilfrid Pole whom you knew. You are entrusted to my charge;
I have sworn to conduct you to the doors in safety, whatever it may cost
me.'

Vittoria looked at him mournfully. Her eyes filled with tears. 'The
night is spoiled for me!' she murmured.

'Emilia!'

'That is not my name.'

'I know you by no other. Have mercy on me. I would do anything in the
world to serve you.'

Major de Pyrmont came up to him and touched his arm. He said briefly:
'We shall have a collision, to a certainty, unless the people hear from
one of her set that she is out of the house.'

Wilfrid requested her to confide her hand to him.

'My hand is engaged,' she said.

Bowing ceremoniously, Wilfrid passed on, and Vittoria, with Carlo and
Luciano and her maid Giacinta, followed between files of bayonets through
the dusky passages, and downstairs into the night air.