Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/133

 saint of Buissac, you know. What were those picture books one had when one was a child?—Boutet de Monvel's Jeanne d'Arc, and Chansons de France; it was like those. Everything was pale; the sky and the trees and the river; even her black dress looked pale; and she was bareheaded, like the little Jeanne d'Arc. It was. So queer, so beautiful. And she's had a saint's life, really. That came out in what the old lady told me. Her mother was mad, Dick.'

'Mad?' As she had echoed the old lady's word so Dick now echoed hers.

'Yes. But it was an accident.—I mean—Mademoiselle Ludérac isn't détrauqée, too. It was an accident and she wore a black patch over her eye and was very white and dressed in black. And she walked about the woods leaning on Marthe's arm. That was the way the old lady first saw them.—What's the matter, Dick?' Graham was looking at her strangely.

'Hadn't that woman who came round the house the other day a black patch over her eye?' he asked, and it was odd to hear how dry he kept his voice as he asked it.

'Why, Dick!—how absurd you are! What tricks your imagination does play you! That was Mademoiselle Ludérac herself, and I saw her two beautiful eyes as plainly as I see yours.'

'Yes. Of course you did. Of course I'm a fool.—But I seemed suddenly to remember, as you said it, that I'd seen it all before.'

'That's the way it works with you, my dear boy.