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 turned to look at the sky, when she had rung, and saw that a vast thunder-cloud had reared its head above the trees, black, magnificent, rimmed against the blue with glittering sunlight. No one answered the bell, and even after she had rung a second time there was a long interval before the door half opened and Joseph peeped out.

'Here I am again, you see, Joseph,' she said. Something in the old man's demeanour affected her unpleasantly. It was almost as if he were unwilling to let her in. 'I've come to take shelter. We're going to have a storm.'

'Mademoiselle has gone out,' said Joseph, still holding the door ajar and peering at Jill with eyes at once furtive and penetrating. 'She is gone to the meadow to fetch up the goat and kid. Madame will perhaps join her there.'

Jill eyed him, pondering. He did not want to let her in. 'It's really Madame la comtesse I've come to see this time,' she said.

'I fear that Madame la comtesse is indisposed to-day,' said Joseph, and the elastic French indisposée, on his lips, was significant of all sorts of warnings. 'Madame will do well not to see her again.'

'Oh, but I must see her before we go away,' said Jill. 'I've not said good-bye to her, and we may be going quite soon.'

'The sooner the better!' said Joseph suddenly; and as Jill gazed at him, astonished and arrested, he put his face close to hers and uttered in a piercing whisper: