"My message is to the Countess Anna."

"You have a message?"

Vittoria lifted the embroidered cigar-case. Countess Anna snatched it
from her hand.

"What does this mean? Is it insolence? Have the kindness, if you
please, not to address me in enigmas. Do you"--Anna was deadly pale as
she turned the cigarcase from side to side--"do you imagine that I smoke,
'par hasard?'" She tried to laugh off her intemperate manner of speech;
the laugh broke at sight of a blood-mark on one corner of the case; she
started and said earnestly, "I beg you to let me hear what the meaning of
this may be?"

"He lies in the Ultenthal, wounded; and his wish was that I should
deliver it to you." Vittoria spoke as gently as the harsh tidings would
allow.

"Wounded? My God! my God!" Anna cried in her own language. "Wounded?-
in the breast, then! He carried it in his breast. Wounded by what? by
what?"

"I can tell you no more."

"Wounded by whom?"

"It was an honourable duel."