* * * * *

Curious eyes had watched the two as they climbed the hill.  For the path ran up the slope to the gap which served for gate, much as the path leads up to the Castle Beautiful in old prints of the Pilgrim’s journey, and Madame St. Lo had marked the first halt and the second, and, noting every gesture, had lost nothing of the interview save the words.  But until the two, after pausing a moment, passed out of sight she made no sign.  Then she laughed.  And as Count Hannibal, at whom the laugh was aimed, did not heed her, she laughed again.  And she hummed the line of Ronsard.

Still he would not be roused, and, piqued, she had recourse to words.

“I wonder what you would do,” she said, “if the old lover followed us, and she went off with him!”

“She would not go,” he answered coldly, and without looking up.

“But if he rode off with her?”

“She would come back on her feet!”

Madame St. Lo’s prudence was not proof against that.  She had the woman’s inclination to hide a woman’s secret; and she had not intended, when she laughed, to do more than play with the formidable man with whom so few dared to play.  Now, stung by his tone and his assurance, she must needs show him that his trustfulness had no base.  And, as so often happens in the circumstances, she went a little farther than the facts bore her.

“Any way, he has followed us so far!” she cried viciously.

“M. de Tignonville?”

“Yes.  I saw him this morning while you were bathing.  She left me and went into the little coppice.  He came down the other side of the brook, stooping and running, and went to join her.”

“How did he cross the brook?”

Madame St. Lo blushed.  “Old Badelon was there, gathering simples,” she said.  “He scared him.  And he crawled away.”

“Then he did not cross?”

“No.  I did not say he did!”

“Nor speak to her?”

“No.  But if you think it will pass so next time—­you do not know much of women!”

“Of women generally, not much,” he answered, grimly polite.  “Of this woman a great deal!”

“You looked in her big eyes, I suppose!” Madame St. Lo cried with heat.  “And straightway fell down and worshipped her!” She liked rather than disliked the Countess; but she was of the lightest, and the least opposition drove her out of her course.  “And you think you know her!  And she, if she could save you from death by opening an eye, would go with a patch on it till her dying day!  Take my word for it, Monsieur, between her and her lover you will come to harm.”

Count Hannibal’s swarthy face darkened a tone, and his eyes grew a very little smaller.

“I fancy that he runs the greater risk,” he muttered.

“You may deal with him, but, for her—­”

“I can deal with her.  You deal with some women with a whip—­”