Vittoria spoke in Carlo's ear: 'I have been unkind to him. I had a great
affection for him in England.'

'Thank him; thank him,' said Carlo.

She quitted her lover's side and went up to Wilfrid with a shyly extended
hand. A carriage was drawn up by the kerbstone; the doors of it were
open. She had barely made a word intelligible; when Major de Pyrmont
pointed to some officers approaching. 'Get her out of the way while
there's time,' he said in French to Luciano. 'This is her carriage.
Swiftly, gentlemen, or she's lost.'

Giacinta read his meaning by signs, and caught her mistress by the
sleeve, using force. She and Major de Pyrmont placed Vittoria,
bewildered, in the carriage; De Pyrmont shut the door, and signalled to
the coachman. Vittoria thrust her head out for a last look at her lover,
and beheld him with the arms of dark-clothed men upon him. La Scala was
pouring forth its occupants in struggling roaring shoals from every door.
Her outcry returned to her deadened in the rapid rolling of the carriage
across the lighted Piazza. Giacinta had to hold her down with all her
might. Great clamour was for one moment heard by them, and then a
rushing voicelessness. Giacinta screamed to the coachman till she was
exhausted. Vittoria sank shuddering on the lap of her maid, hiding her
face that she might plunge out of recollection.

The lightnings shot across her brain, but wrote no legible thing; the
scenes of the opera lost their outlines as in a white heat of fire. She
tried to weep, and vainly asked her heart for tears, that this dry
dreadful blind misery of mere sensation might be washed out of her, and