of her lip.

She quitted him and hurried to Angelo. Her joy broke out in a cry of
thankfulness at sight of Angelo; he had risen from his bed; he could
stand, and he smiled.

"That Jacopo is just now the nearest link to me," he said, when she
related her having seen the two men guarded by soldiers; he felt
helpless, and spoke in resignation. She followed his eye about the room
till it rested on the stilet. This she handed to him. "If they think of
having me alive!" he said softly. The Italian and his wife who had
given him shelter and nursed him came in, and approved his going, though
they did not complain of what they might chance to have incurred. He
offered them his purse, and they took it. Minutes of grievous
expectation went by; Vittoria could endure them no longer; she ran out to
the hotel, near which, in the shade of a poplar, Wilfrid was smoking
quietly. He informed her that his sister and the doctor had driven out
to meet Captain Gambier; his brother-in-law was alone upstairs. Her look
of amazement touched him more shrewdly than scorn, and he said, "What on
earth can I do?"

"Order out a carriage. Send your brother-in-law in it. If you tell him
'for your health,' he will go."

"On my honour, I don't know where those three words would not send him,"
said Wilfrid; but he did not move, and was for protesting that he really
could not guess what was the matter, and the ground for all this urgency.

Vittoria compelled her angry lips to speak out her suspicions explicitly,
whereupon he glanced at the sun-glare in a meditation, occasionally