To seal the bargain, to stress perhaps his right, he leaned forward and kissed her cheek.

She suffered it with a statuesque impassivity that maddened him.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE QUEST

Isotta and her brother sat alone once more in her boudoir.

Despair had stripped her of her stateliness. She was in tears.

Domenico sat on a painted coffer, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands, misery in his face. He had heard from her all that had passed at her interview with Vendramin, and his present consternation chiefly concerned the indiscretion of her visit to Marc-Antoine.

'That you should have taken so foolish a step is nothing. That Vendramin should have knowledge and proof of it is terrible. It places you in that fellow's power. If he were to publish this thing . . . Oh, my God!' He got up, and stamped about the room.

'I fear that much less than the alternative of marrying him, a profligate, an escroc, a murderer. That is the husband my father imposes on me out of his loyalty to Venice. God of pity! When I consider that I am the bribe, the decoy to lure this villain into patriotic activity, I ask myself, is that less shameful than to be branded for a wanton? What honour do you suppose that his wife will enjoy? Will it be any higher than the dishonour with which he threatens me if I refuse the marriage?'

Domenico went down on one knee beside her and put his arms about her in a sheltering gesture of compassion.

'My poor Isotta! Poor child! Courage, courage! We are not at the marriage yet, and please God we never shall be. Do you think I want that nasty rogue for a brother-in-law? You were clever to compel postponement of the decision. We have a month. And in a month . . . What cannot happen in a month?' He kissed her tenderly, and as she clung to him, fondly, gratefully, he pursued his encouragements. 'I'll not be idle in the time. I'll begin by trying to discover something more about his quarrel with Marc, and how it came, after all, to be fought. It may be known. Leave me to investigate. Then perhaps we can decide on something.'

But for all his earnest brotherly intentions, Domenico, like his father, having always held aloof from the more frivolous groups of Venetian society, which both Vendramin and Marc-Antoine had been frequenting at the time of the duel, did not find it easy to penetrate it now. Moreover, his opportunities were curtailed by an increase of military duties. The consternation caused by the revolts of Bergamo and Brescia was not allayed by the news that reached Venice as the month of March wore on.

Bonaparte, having forced the passage of the Tagliamento, had steadily thrust the Austrian army back and back until before the end of the month the Archduke Charles was assembling the broken remnants of it at Klagenfurth, and the Army of Italy stood on enemy territory and the road to Vienna.

Lodovico Manin had not even been constrained to face the agony of a pronouncement in the matter of that eleventh-hour alliance with the Austrians, nor had the Grand Council ever been assembled to debate the matter. By the time that Count Pizzamano had placed before the Doge his information concerning the French plan, the Army of Italy was already advancing. It was too late for any measure beyond that of fortifying the actual city of Venice in a deluded hope of preserving her from violation, whatever happened.

For this the Council of Ten had issued the necessary orders, and it may have occurred to them that, considering the anger of the inhabitants with a government whose ineptitude seemed now completely established, if the troops assembled in the capital could not ultimately be used to protect the city from the French, they could certainly be used in the meantime to protect the government from the city.

Meanwhile, as a further measure of pacification, rumours were diligently being circulated. It was said, untruly, that the Emperor was sending down yet another army of seventy thousand men. Less untruthful—but of a significance not yet realized by the people—was the rumour that peace was about to be made.

The display of activity was not confined to the military. The agents of the inquisitors of state were now of an extraordinary diligence, and arrests upon denunciations of Jacobinism, of espionage, or other forms of treason were taking place on every hand. Disappearances in those days of panic were commonplace.

It was to a Venice scarcely recognizable that Marc-Antoine at last returned when he emerged from his convalescence at the legation. This did not happen until the early days of April, on the morrow, in fact, of the battle of Judenburg in which the Austrians suffered the final defeat of the campaign.

Although in Venice it was not yet suspected, the war was over, and within a week the suspension of hostilities would be signed.

The Vicomtesse had remained at the legation to tend Marc-Antoine until there was no longer a shadow of an excuse to justify her in neglecting the insidious propagandist work that Lallemant was demanding of her, the careful, gradual preparation of Venetian minds for what was to come. It was a work in which he was employing by now a small army of agents, many of whom were actually Venetian.

Her withdrawal had occurred as soon as Marc-Antoine was permitted to leave his bed and sit for a few hours by his window over-looking the Corte del Cavallo. It was an uninteresting prospect; but he sat in the sun, and this and the invigorating air of early spring helped forward his convalescence.

On the day when first he had sat there, in bedgown and slippers, his thick black hair loosely tied and a rug about his knees, he had expressed to the Vicomtesse his unstinted acknowledgment of a debt which it secretly troubled him to have contracted.

'I should not be alive, Anne, if it had not been for your care of me.'

She smiled upon him with a sad tenderness. She had been unsparing of herself, and the battle she had fought on his behalf with death had left its scars upon her. The winsome little face was pinched, and her true age, which in full state of health she dissembled under an almost childish freshness, was starkly revealed.

'That is too much to say. But if I have helped to preserve your life, that gives me something creditable to set against all the rest.'

'All the rest?'

She turned away, and busied herself in the arrangement of some early violets in a piece of majolica that stood upon the table.

When she spoke again, it was on a little note of subdued fierceness to deplore that it did not lie in her power at the same time to avenge him.

'I have no doubt whom you have to thank for a wound that was meant to be mortal. I suspected it at the time. We have had evidence since. One of the men you wounded was the leader of that band. And Vendramin was kept indoors by a wound for ten days after that affair.'

'That is very interesting,' said Marc-Antoine.

'Interesting?' she had echoed. 'It would be interesting if I could bring that murderer to account. At first, I thought myself responsible. Perhaps I am in part. But only in part. He seems to have had cause for jealousy on another score.' She paused. She had come to stand beside him. She fussed with the pillows that supported him. 'Madonna Isotta Pizzamano's interest in you showed me that. It seems our destiny to be rivals, she and I.'

She said it lightly, and laughed as she said it, as if to cover with an air of jesting an admission of the boldness of which she was conscious.

He did not answer her. That mention of Isotta brought his thoughts sharply and painfully to the hopelessness of the situation as it now stood, a situation that for him meant defeat on every side.

For a time the Vicomtesse was content furtively to watch his absorption. Then she broke in upon it.

'I compassionated the lady who was to marry Vendramin even before I suspected that there were such grounds for my pity. What must I do now?' She paused to come and place a hand upon his shoulder. 'If you love Mademoiselle Isotta, why do you suffer Vendramin to marry her?'

He studied his hands for a time, looking so wasted, so white and translucent. Then he raised his glance and found her eyes upon him very intently.

'If you will tell me how I am to prevent it, you will answer a question to which I can find no answer.'

Her glance fell away from his, her hand from his shoulder. It was as if his reply had rebuffed her. She moved away a little, and fetched a sigh. 'I see,' she said. 'It is as I supposed.' And then, as if suddenly conscious that she had betrayed herself, she swung to him again, and spoke with a vehemence that brought a flush to her cheek. 'But don't think that I begrudge her this. So far am I from begrudging her, that there is nothing I would not do to help you to her. That is how I love you, Marc.'

'My dear!' he cried, and impulsively extended one of those wasted hands.

She held it while she answered him. 'I take no shame in confessing something that you must already know, something to which what you have now told me shows me that there can be no return. Nor need you look so troubled, my dear; for it is something that leaves me no regrets.'

Gently he pressed the hand he held. Whilst inevitably and deeply touched by this declaration from one who had given such generous proof of her devotion, he was yet conscious of its oddness in a woman who by adoption bore his name, a woman who announced herself his widow.

The only words he could find seemed trivial and banal.