He expected no such a report of Vittoria's indiscretion as Luigi had spiced with his one foolish lie.

That she should tell the relatives of an Austrian officer that Milan was soon to be a dangerous place for them;--and that she should write it on paper and leave it for the officer to read,--left her, according to Barto's reading of her, open to the alternative charges of imbecility or of treachery.

Her letter to the English lady, the Austrian officer's sister, was an exaggeration of the offence, but lent it more the look of heedless folly.

The point was to obtain sight of her letter to the Austrian officer himself.

Barto was baffled during a course of anxious days that led closely up to the fifteenth.