heart. It helped her to fall into a state of insensibility. When she
awoke, the room was dark; she felt that some one had put a silken cushion
across her limbs. The noise of a storm traversing the vale rang through
the castle, and in the desolation of her soul, that stealthy act of
kindness wrought in her till she almost fashioned a vow upon her lips
that she would leave the world to toss its wrecks, and dedicate her life
to God.

For, O heaven! of what avail is human effort? She thought of the Chief,
whose life was stainless, but who stood proscribed because his aim was
too high to be attained within compass of a mortal's years. His error
seemed that he had ever aimed at all. He seemed less wise than the old
priest of the oratory. She could not disentangle him from her own
profound humiliation and sense of fallen power. Her lover's imprisonment
accused her of some monstrous culpability, which she felt unrepentingly,
not as we feel a truth, but as we submit to a terrible force of pressure.

The morning light made her realize Carlo's fate, to whom it would
penetrate through a hideous barred loophole--a defaced and dreadful beam.
She asked herself why she had fled from Milan. It must have been some
cowardly instinct that had prompted her to fly. "Coward, coward! thing
of vanity! you, a mere woman!" she cried out, and succeeded in despising
herself sufficiently to think it possible that she had deserved to
forfeit her lover's esteem.

It was still early when the duchess's maid came to her, bringing word
that her mistress would be glad to visit her. From the duchess Vittoria
heard of the charge against Angelo. Respecting Captain Weisspriess,
Amalia said that she had perceived his object in wishing to bring the
great cantatrice to the castle; and that it was a well-devised audacious