Tignonville looked back at her and smiled. She caught the look; she
fancied that she understood it and his thoughts. But her own eyes were
moist at the moment with tears, and what his said, and what there was of
strangeness in his glance, half-warning, half-exultant, escaped her. For
there, not a mile before them, where the low hills about the fishing
village began to rise from the dull inland level--hills green on the land
side, bare and scarped towards the sea and the island--she espied the
wayside chapel at which the nurse of her early childhood had told her
beads. Where it stood, the road from Commequiers and the road she
travelled became one: a short mile thence, after winding among the
hillocks, it ran down to the beach and the causeway--and to her home.
At the sight she bethought herself of Carlat, and calling to M. de
Tignonville, she asked him what he thought of the steward's continued
absence.
"He must have outpaced us!" he answered, with an odd laugh.
"But he must have ridden hard to do that."
He reined back to her. "Say nothing!" he muttered under his breath. "But
look ahead, Madame, and see if we are expected!"
"Expected? How can we be expected?" she cried. The colour rushed into
her face.
He put his finger to his lip, and looked warningly at Badelon's humped
shoulders, jogging up and down in front of them. Then, stooping towards
her, in a lower tone, "If Carlat has arrived before us, he will have told
them," he said.
"Have told them?"
"He came by the other road, and it is quicker."
She gazed at him in astonishment, her lips parted; and slowly she
understood, and her eyes grew hard.
"Then why," she said, "did you say it was longer. Had we been overtaken,
Monsieur, we had had you to thank for it, it seems!"
He bit his lip. "But we have not been overtaken," he rejoined. "On the
contrary, you have me to thank for something quite different."
"As unwelcome, perhaps!" she retorted. "For what?"
"Softly, Madame."
"For what?" she repeated, refusing to lower her voice. "Speak, Monsieur,
if you please." He had never seen her look at him in that way.
"For the fact," he answered, stung by her look and tone, "that when you
arrive you will find yourself mistress in your own house! Is that
nothing?"
"You have called in my people?"
"Carlat has done so, or should have," he answered. "Henceforth," he
continued, a ring of exultation in his voice, "it will go hard with M. le
Comte, if he does not treat you better than he has treated you hitherto.
That is all!"
"You mean that it will go hard with him in any case?" she cried, her
bosom rising and falling.