looking as if he would
have added "Thank God!" but for the sake of prudence. "No; his estate is
very large, but it extends in the other direction from Montoire."

"Is he a pleasant neighbour, then?"

"Oh, I have no fault to find, for my part. One mustn't believe all the
grumblers. You may hear it said of him that his smile is more frightful
than another man's rage. But people will say things, you know, when they
think they have grievances."

I fancied that the innkeeper shared this opinion which he attributed to
the grumblers, and took satisfaction in getting it expressed, though too
cautious to father it himself.

"Then he has no great reputation for benevolence?"

"Oh, I don't say that. We must take what we hear, with a grain of salt.
He is certainly one of the great noblemen of this neighbourhood;
certainly a brave man. You will hear silly talk, of course: how that he
is a man whose laugh makes one think of dungeon chains and the rack. But
some people will give vent to their envy of the great."

I shuddered inwardly, to think that my undertaking might bring me across
the path of a man as sinister and formidable as these bits of
description seemed to indicate.

"What family has he?" I asked, trying the more to seem indifferent as I
came closer to the point.

"No family. His children are all dead. Some foolish folk say he expected
too much of them, and tried to bring them up too severely, as if they
had been Spartans. But that is certainly a slander, for his eldest son
was killed in battle in the last civil war."

"Then he has no daughter--or grand-daughter--or niece, perhaps?"

"Not that I know of. Why do you ask, Monsieur?"

"I thought I saw a lady at one of the windows," said I, inventing.

"No doubt. It must have been his wife. She would be the only lady
there."

"Oh, but this was surely a young lady," I said, clinging to my
preconceptions.

"Certainly. His new wife is young. The children I spoke of were by his
first wife, poor woman! Oh, yes, his new wife is young--beautiful too,
they say."

"And how do she and the Count agree together, being rather unevenly
matched?"

"That is the question. Nobody sees much of their life. She never comes
out of the grounds of the chateau, except to church sometimes, when she
looks neither to the right nor to the left."

"But who are her people, to have arranged her marriage with such a man?"

"Oh. I believe she has no people. An orphan, whom he took out of