“By Heaven,” I cried, “it shall not wear it for long!  Which way did they go?”

She pointed to the road by the side of the bay, leading away from Avranches.

“That way.  I watched the carriage and its dust till I saw it no more, because of the wood that lies between here and the road.  You pursue them, sir?”

“To the world’s end, madame, if I must.”

She sighed and opened her lips to speak, but no words came; and without more, I turned and left her, and set my face to follow the carriage.  I was, I think, half-mad with anger and bewilderment, for I did not think that it would be time well spent to ascend to the town and obtain a vehicle or a horse; but I pressed on afoot, weary and in pain as I was, along the hot white road.  For now indeed my heart was on fire, and I knew that beside Marie Delhasse everything was nothing.  So at first imperceptibly, slowly, and unobserved, but at the last with a swift resistless rush, the power of her beauty and of the soul that I had seemed to see in her won upon me; and that moment, when I thought that she had yielded to her enemy and mine, was the flowering and bloom of my love for her.

Where had they gone?  Not to the duke’s house, or I should have met them as I rode down earlier in the morning.  Then where?  France was wide, and the world wider:  my steps were slow.  Where lay the use of the chase?  In the middle of the road, when I had gone perhaps a mile, I stopped dead.  I was beaten and sick at heart, and I searched for a nook of shade by the wayside, and flung myself on the ground; and the ache of my arm was the least of my pain.

As I lay there, my eye caught sight of a cloud of dust on the road.  For a moment I scanned it eagerly, and then fell back with a curse of disappointment.  It was caused by a man on a horse—­and the man was not the duke.  But in an instant I was sitting up again—­for as the rider drew nearer, trotting briskly along, his form and air was familiar to me; and when he came opposite to me, I sprang up and ran out to meet him, crying out to him: 

“Gustave!  Gustave!”

It was Gustave de Berensac, my friend.  He reined in his horse and greeted me—­and he greeted me without surprise, but not without apparent displeasure.

“I thought I should find you here still,” said he.  “I rode over to seek you.  Surely you are not at the duchess’?”

His tone was eloquent of remonstrance.

“I’ve been staying at the inn.”

“At the inn?” he repeated, looking at me curiously.  “And is the duchess at home?”

“She’s at home now.  How come you here?”

“Ah, my friend, and how comes your arm in a sling?  Well, you shall have my story first.  I expect it will prove shorter.  I am staying at Pontorson with a friend who is quartered there.”

“But you went to Paris.”

Gustave leaned clown to me, and spoke in a low impressive tone: