et it, and noticed that its collar was
missing. His wife told him that the dog had lost it in the undergrowth
of the park, and that she and her maids had hunted a whole day for it.
It was true, she explained to the court, that she had made the maids
search for the necklet--they all believed the dog had lost it in the
park...

Her husband made no comment, and that evening at supper he was in his
usual mood, between good and bad: you could never tell which. He talked
a good deal, describing what he had seen and done at Rennes; but now
and then he stopped and looked hard at her; and when she went to bed she
found her little dog strangled on her pillow. The little thing was
dead, but still warm; she stooped to lift it, and her distress turned to
horror when she discovered that it had been strangled by twisting twice
round its throat the necklet she had given to Lanrivain.

The next morning at dawn she buried the dog in the garden, and hid the
necklet in her breast. She said nothing to her husband, then or later,
and he said nothing to her; but that day he had a peasant hanged for
stealing a faggot in the park, and the next day he nearly beat to death
a young horse he was breaking.

Winter set in, and the short days passed, and the long nights, one by
one; and she heard nothing of Herve de Lanrivain. It might be that
her husband had killed him; or merely that he had been robbed of the
necklet. Day after day by the hearth among the spinning maids, night
after night alone on her bed, she wondered and trembled. Sometimes at
table her husband looked across at her and smiled; and then she felt
sure that Lanrivain was dead. She dared not try to get news of him, for
she was sure her husband would find out if she did: she had an idea
that he could find out anything. Even when a witch-woman who was a noted
seer, and could show you the whole world in her crystal, came to the
castle for a night's shelter, and the maids flocked to her, Anne held
back. The winter was long and black and rainy. One day, in Yves
de Cornault's absence, some gypsies came to Kerfol with a troop of
performing dogs. Anne bought the smallest and cleverest, a white dog
with a feathery coat and one blue and one brown eye. It seemed to have
been ill-treated by the gypsies, and clung to her plaintively when she
took it from them. That evening her husband came back, and when she went
to bed she found the dog strangled on her pillow.

After that she said to herself