Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/239

 the kid had laid itself down in a sunny nook among the bushes. Its little face looked up inquiringly at him as he passed it, innocently arch, with great limpid eyes and two soft buds on its forehead where the horns would be.

Graham and Mademoiselle Ludérac turned and walked side by side down the meadow. Both were silent; perfectly silent. Graham had clasped his hands on his stick behind his back and looked before him with an air of unconcern. Mademoiselle Ludérac, her arms tightly folded in her black shawl, turned her head away and seemed to watch the river. Above them towered the vast form of the promontory. Behind them the thrush sang loudly on, and the wind in the island poplars swept the branches against the sky to slanting lines of blue and silver.

As they neared the bridge, Graham glanced down at the stream and saw again the sharp blue edge of sky, the promontory beak. His dizzy panic gripped him for an uncanny moment and it seemed to him, while he looked, that they were entrapped between the two abysses and that escape was impossible. Then his eye fixed itself in astonishment, for deep in the stream, reflected on the far, high blue, a black blot was poised against the sky. From the stream he looked up at the sheer face of the cliff and saw that Madame de Lamouderie was standing at its topmost verge, looking down at them.

Leaning on her stick, there she stood. From their lifted faces, even at her distance, she must have seen