pouring their combatants to the spot; Count Lenkenstein was plunged upon
the door-steps. Wilfrid gained half-a-minute's parley by shouting in his
foreign accent, "Would you hurt an Englishman?" Some one took him by the
arm, and helping to raise the count, hurried them both into the house.

"You must make excuses for popular fury in times like these," the
stranger observed.

The Austrian nobleman asked him stiffly for his name. The name of Count
Ammiani was given. "I think you know it," Carlo added.

"You escaped from your lawful imprisonment this day, did you not?--you
and your cousin, the assassin. I talk of law! I might as justly talk of
honour. Who lives here?" Carlo contained himself to answer, "The
present occupant is, I believe, if I have hit the house I was seeking,
the Countess d'Isorella."

"My family were placed here, sir?" Count Lenkenstein inquired of Wilfrid.
But Wilfrid's attention was frozen by the sight of Vittoria's lover. A
wifely call of "Adalbert" from above quieted the count's anxiety.

"Countess d'Isorella," he said. "I know that woman. She belongs to the
secret cabinet of Carlo Alberto--a woman with three edges. Did she not
visit you in prison two weeks ago? I speak to you, Count Ammiani. She
applied to the Archduke and the Marshal for permission to visit you. It
was accorded. To the devil with our days of benignity! She was from
Turin. The shuffle has made her my hostess for the nonce. I will go to
her. You, sir," the count turned to Wilfrid--"you will stay below. Are
you in the pay of the insurgents?"