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.
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