She pondered over it as they rode that evening, with the weltering sun in their eyes and the lengthening shadows of the oaks falling athwart the bracken which fringed the track.  Across breezy heaths and over downs, through green bottoms and by hamlets, from which every human creature fled at their approach, they ambled on by twos and threes; riding in a world of their own, so remote, so different from the real world—­from which they came and to which they must return—­that she could have wept in anguish, cursing God for the wickedness of man which lay so heavy on creation.  The gaunt troopers riding at ease with swinging legs and swaying stirrups—­and singing now a refrain from Ronsard, and now one of those verses of Marot’s psalms which all the world had sung three decades before—­wore their most lamb-like aspect.  Behind them Madame St. Lo chattered to Suzanne of a riding mask which had not been brought, or planned expedients, if nothing sufficiently in the mode could be found at Angers.  And the other women talked and giggled, screamed when they came to fords, and made much of steep places, where the men must help them.  In time of war death’s shadow covers but a day, and sorrow out of sight is out of mind.  Of all the troop whom the sinking sun left within sight of the lofty towers and vine-clad hills of Vendome, three only wore faces attuned to the cruel August week just ending; three only, like dark beads strung far apart on a gay nun’s rosary, rode, brooding and silent, in their places.  The Countess was one—­the others were the two men whose thoughts she filled, and whose eyes now and again sought her, La Tribe’s with sombre fire in their depths, Count Hannibal’s fraught with a gloomy speculation, which belied his brave words to Madame St. Lo.

He, moreover, as he rode, had other thoughts; dark ones, which did not touch her.  And she, too, had other thoughts at times, dreams of her young lover, spasms of regret, a wild revolt of heart, a cry out of the darkness which had suddenly whelmed her.  So that of the three only La Tribe was single-minded.

This day they rode a long league after sunset, through a scattered oak-wood, where the rabbits sprang up under their horses’ heads and the squirrels made angry faces at them from the lower branches.  Night was hard upon them when they reached the southern edge of the forest, and looked across the dusky open slopes to a distant light or two which marked where Vendome stood.

“Another league,” Count Hannibal muttered; and he bade the men light fires where they were, and unload the packhorses. “’Tis pure and dry here,” he said.  “Set a watch, Bigot, and let two men go down for water.  I hear frogs below.  You do not fear to be moonstruck, Madame?”

“I prefer this,” she answered in a low voice.

“Houses are for monks and nuns!” he rejoined heartily.  “Give me God’s heaven.”

“The earth is His, but we deface it,” she murmured, reverting to her thoughts, and unconscious that it was to him she spoke.