"There is only one happy man in the world," she answered, with
conviction.
"By name?"
"The hermit of Compiegne."
"And in a week you would be wild for a masque!" he said cynically. And
turning on his heel he followed the men.
Madame St. Lo sighed complacently. "Heigho!" she said. "He's right! We
are never content, ma mie! When I am trifling in the Gallery my heart
is in the greenwood. And when I have eaten black bread and drank spring
water for a fortnight I do nothing but dream of Zamet's, and white
mulberry tarts! And you are in the same case. You have saved your round
white neck, or it has been saved for you, by not so much as the thickness
of Zamet's pie-crust--I declare my mouth is beginning to water for
it!--and instead of being thankful and making the best of things, you are
thinking of poor Madame d'Yverne, or dreaming of your calf-love!"
The girl's face--for a girl she was, though they called her Madame--began
to work. She struggled a moment with her emotion, and then broke down,
and fell to weeping silently. For two days she had sat in public and not
given way. But the reference to her lover was too much for her strength.
Madame St. Lo looked at her with eyes which were not unkindly.
"Sits the wind in that quarter?" she murmured. "I thought so! But
there, my dear, if you don't put that packet in your gown you'll wash out
the address! Moreover, if you ask me, I don't think the young man is
worth it. It is only that what we have not got--we want!"
But the young Countess had borne to the limit of her powers. With an
incoherent word she rose to her feet, and walked hurriedly away. The
thought of what was and of what might have been, the thought of the lover
who still--though he no longer seemed, even to her, the perfect hero--held
a place in her heart, filled her breast to overflowing. She longed for
some spot where she could weep unseen; where the sunshine and the blue
sky would not mock her grief; and seeing in front of her a little clump
of alders, which grew beside the stream, in a bend that in winter was
marshy, she hastened towards it.
Madame St. Lo saw her figure blend with the shadow of the trees.
"Quite a la Ronsard, I give my word!" she murmured. "And now she is
out of sight! La, la! I could play at the game myself, and carve
sweet sorrow on the barks of trees, if it were not so lonesome! And if I
had a man!"
And gazing pensively at the stream and the willows, my lady tried to work
herself into a proper frame of mind; now murmuring the name of one
gallant, and now, finding it unsuited, the name of another. But the soft
inflection would break into a giggle, and finally into a yawn; and, tired
of the attempt, she began to pluck grass and throw it from her. By-and-by
she discovered that Madame Carlat and the women, who had their place a
little apart, had disappeared; and affrighted by the solitude and
silence--for neither of which she was made--she sprang up and stared
about her, hoping to discern them. Right and left, however, the sweep of
hillside curved upward to the skyline, lonely and untenanted; behind her
the castled rock frowned down on the rugged gorge and filled it with
dispiriting shadow. Madame St. Lo stamped her foot on the turf.