Page:Stanley Weyman--Count Hannibal.djvu/207

Rh chestnut-trees. The horses grazed within sight, moving now and again, with a jingle of trappings or a jealous neigh: the women’s chatter vied with the unceasing sound of the mill-stream. After dinner, Madame St. Lo touched the lute, and Badelon — Badelon who had seen the sack of the Colonna’s Palace, and been served by cardinals on the knee — fed a water-rat, which had its home in one of the willow-stumps, with carrot-parings. One by one the men laid themselves to sleep with their faces on their arms; and to the eyes all was as all had been yesterday in this camp of armed men living peacefully.

But not to the Countess! She had accepted her life, she had resigned herself, she had marvelled that it was no worse. After the horrors of Paris the calm of the last two days had fallen on her as balm on a wound. Worn out in body and mind, she had rested, and only rested; without thought, almost without emotion, save for the feeling, half fear, half curiosity, which stirred her in regard to the strange man, her husband. Who on his side left her alone.

But the last hour had wrought a change. Her eyes were grown restless, her colour came and went. The past stirred in its shallow — ah, so shallow — grave; and dead hopes and dead forebodings, strive as she might, thrust out hands to plague and torment her. If the man who sought to speak with her by stealth, who dogged her footsteps and hung on the skirts of her party, were Tignonville — her lover, who at his own request had been escorted to the Arsenal before their departure from Paris — then her plight was a sorry one. For what woman, wedded as she had been wedded, could think otherwise than indulgently of his persistence? And yet, lover and husband! What peril, what shame the words had often spelled! At the thought only she trembled and her colour ebbed. She saw, as one who stands on the brink of a precipice, the depth