im? I am not
timid, and he did me no harm. I beg, Madame, that you will do me the
favour of being silent on the matter."

"Oh, if you insist? But what a pother--"

"I did not see him, and he did not see me," Madame de Tavannes answered
vehemently. "I fail, therefore, to understand why we should harass him,
whoever he be. Besides, M. de Tavannes is waiting for us."

"And M. de Tignonville--is following us!" Madame St. Lo muttered under
her breath. And she made a face at the other's back.

She was silent, however. They returned to the others and nothing of
import, it would seem, had happened. The soft summer air played on the
meal laid under the willows as it had played on the meal of yesterday
laid under the chestnut-trees. The horses grazed within sight, moving
now and again, with a jingle of trappings or a jealous neigh: the women's
chatter vied with the unceasing sound of the mill-stream. After dinner,
Madame St. Lo touched the lute, and Badelon--Badelon who had seen the
sack of the Colonna's Palace, and been served by cardinals on the
knee--fed a water-rat, which had its home in one of the willow-stumps,
with carrot-parings. One by one the men laid themselves to sleep with
their faces on their arms; and to the eyes all was as all had been
yesterday in this camp of armed men living peacefully.

But not to the Countess! She had accepted her life, she had resigned
herself, she had marvelled that it was no worse. After the horrors of
Paris the calm of the last two days had fallen on her as balm on a wound.
Worn out in body and mind, she had rested, and only rested; without
thought, almost without emotion, save for the feeling, half fear, half
curiosity, which stirred her in regard to the strange man, her husband.
Who on his side left her alone.

But the last hour had wrought a change. Her eyes were grown restless,
her colour came and went. The past stirred in its shallow--ah, so
shallow--grave; and dead hopes and dead forebodings, strive as she might,
thrust out hands to plague and torment her. If the man who sought to
speak with her by stealth, who dogged her footsteps and hung on the
skirts of her party, were Tignonville--her lover, who at his own request
had been escorted to the Arsenal before their departure from Paris--then
her plight was a sorry one. For what woman, wedded as she had been
wedded, could think otherwise than indulgently of his persistence? And
yet, lover and husband! What per