at the unhappy woman in helpless
bewilderment.

"Monsieur, monsieur, give me an answer!" she cried.

"Yes, madame."

"Is it true? Oh! tell me the truth; I can hear the truth. Tell me the
truth! Any pain would be less keen than this suspense."

I answered by two tears wrung from me by that strange tone of hers. She
leaned against a tree with a faint, sharp cry.

"Madame, here comes your husband!"

"Have I a husband?" and with those words she fled away out of sight.

"Well," cried the Count, "dinner is growing cold.--Come, monsieur."

Thereupon I followed the master of the house into the dining-room.
Dinner was served with all the luxury which we have learned to expect in
Paris. There were five covers laid, three for the Count and Countess and
their little daughter; my own, which should have been HIS; and another
for the canon of Saint-Denis, who said grace, and then asked:

"Why, where can our dear Countess be?"

"Oh! she will be here directly," said the Count. He had hastily helped
us to the soup, and was dispatching an ample plateful with portentous
speed.

"Oh! nephew," exclaimed the canon, "if your wife were here, you would
behave more rationally."

"Papa will make himself ill!" said the child with a mischievous look.

Just after this extraordinary gastronomical episode, as the Count was
eagerly helping himself to a slice of venison, a housemaid came in with,
"We cannot find madame anywhere, sir!"

I sprang up at the words with a dread in my mind, my fears written
so plainly in my face, that the old canon came out after me into the
garden. The Count, for the sake of appearances, came as far as the
threshold.

"Don't go, don't go!" called he. "Don't trouble yourselves in the
least," but he did not offer to accompany us.

We three--the canon, the housemaid, and I--hurried through the garden
walks and over the bowling-green in the park, shouting, listening for
an answer, growing more uneasy every moment. As we hurried along, I told
the story of the fatal accident, and discovered how strongly the maid
was attached to her mistress, for she took my secret dread far more
seriously than the canon. We went along by the pools of water; all over
the park we went; but we neither found the Countess nor any sign that
she had passed that way. At last we turned back, and under the walls of
some outbuildings I heard a smothered, wailing cry, so stifled that it
was scarcely audible. The sound seemed to come from a