The girl’s face—­for a girl she was, though they called her Madame—­began to work.  She struggled a moment with her emotion, and then broke down, and fell to weeping silently.  For two days she had sat in public and not given way.  But the reference to her lover was too much for her strength.

Madame St. Lo looked at her with eyes which were not unkindly.

“Sits the wind in that quarter?” she murmured.  “I thought so!  But there, my dear, if you don’t put that packet in your gown you’ll wash out the address!  Moreover, if you ask me, I don’t think the young man is worth it.  It is only that what we have not got—­we want!”

But the young Countess had borne to the limit of her powers.  With an incoherent word she rose to her feet, and walked hurriedly away.  The thought of what was and of what might have been, the thought of the lover who still—­though he no longer seemed, even to her, the perfect hero—­held a place in her heart, filled her breast to overflowing.  She longed for some spot where she could weep unseen; where the sunshine and the blue sky would not mock her grief; and seeing in front of her a little clump of alders, which grew beside the stream, in a bend that in winter was marshy, she hastened towards it.

Madame St. Lo saw her figure blend with the shadow of the trees.

“Quite a la Ronsard, I give my word!” she murmured.  “And now she is out of sight! La, la!  I could play at the game myself, and carve sweet sorrow on the barks of trees, if it were not so lonesome!  And if I had a man!”

And gazing pensively at the stream and the willows, my lady tried to work herself into a proper frame of mind; now murmuring the name of one gallant, and now, finding it unsuited, the name of another.  But the soft inflection would break into a giggle, and finally into a yawn; and, tired of the attempt, she began to pluck grass and throw it from her.  By-and-by she discovered that Madame Carlat and the women, who had their place a little apart, had disappeared; and affrighted by the solitude and silence—­for neither of which she was made—­she sprang up and stared about her, hoping to discern them.  Right and left, however, the sweep of hillside curved upward to the skyline, lonely and untenanted; behind her the castled rock frowned down on the rugged gorge and filled it with dispiriting shadow.  Madame St. Lo stamped her foot on the turf.

“The little fool!” she murmured pettishly.  “Does she think that I am to be murdered that she may fatten on sighs?  Oh, come up, Madame, you must be dragged out of this!” And she started briskly towards the alders, intent on gaining company as quickly as possible.