Page:Stevenson - Prince Otto. A Romance.djvu/297

 dashed down the road at full gallop. The groom, after a pause of wonder, followed her. The rush of her impetuous passage almost scared the carriage horses over the verge of the steep hill; and still she clattered further, and the crags echoed to her flight, and still the groom flogged vainly in pursuit of her. At the fourth corner, a woman trailing slowly up leaped back with a cry and escaped death by a hand’s-breadth. But the Countess wasted neither glance nor thought upon the incident. Out and in, about the bluffs of the mountain wall, she fled, loose-reined, and still the groom toiled in her pursuit.

‘A most impulsive lady!’ said Sir John. ‘Who would have thought she cared for him?’ And before the words were uttered, he was struggling in the Prince’s grasp.

‘My wife! the Princess? What of her?’

‘She is down the road,’ he gasped. ‘I left her twenty minutes back.’

And next moment, the choked author stood alone, and the Prince on foot was racing down the hill behind the Countess.