He walked slowly into the woods on the left, and the two sisters followed him.  Of the two Minnie was far the more cool and collected.  She was as composed as usual; and, as there was no help for it, she walked on.  Mrs. Willoughby, however, was terribly agitated, and wept and shuddered and moaned incessantly.

“Kitty darling,” said Minnie, “I wish you wouldn’t go on so.  You really make me feel quite nervous.  I never saw you so bad in my life.”

“Poor Minnie!  Poor child!  Poor sweet child!”

“Well, if I am a child, you needn’t go and tell me about it all the time.  It’s really quite horrid.”

Mrs. Willoughby said no more, but generously tried to repress her own feelings, so as not to give distress to her sister.

After the Count had entered the wood with the two sisters the drivers removed the horses from the carriages and went away, led off by the man who had driven the ladies.  This was the man whose stolid face had seemed likely to belong to an honest man, but who now was shown to belong to the opposite class.  These men went down the road over which they had come, leaving the carriages there with the ladies and their maids.

Girasole now led the way, and Minnie and her sister followed him.  The wood was very thick, and grew more so as they advanced, but there was not much underbrush, and progress was not difficult.  Several times a wild thought of flight came to Mrs. Willoughby, but was at once dispelled by a helpless sense of its utter impossibility.  How could she persuade the impracticable Minnie, who seemed so free from all concern? or, if she could persuade her, how could she accomplish her desire?  She would at once be pursued and surrounded, while, even if she did manage to escape, how could she ever find her way to any place of refuge?  Every minute, also, drew them deeper and deeper into the woods, and the path was a winding one, in which she soon became bewildered, until at last all sense of her whereabouts was utterly gone.  At last even the idea of escaping ceased to suggest itself, and there remained only a dull despair, a sense of utter helplessness and hopelessness—­the sense of one who is going to his doom.

Girasole said nothing whatever, but led the way in silence, walking slowly enough to accommodate the ladies, and sometimes holding an overhanging branch to prevent it from springing back in their faces.  Minnie walked on lightly, and with an elastic step, looking around with evident interest upon the forest.  Once a passing lizard drew from her a pretty little shriek of alarm, thus showing that while she was so calm in the face of real and frightful danger, she could be alarmed by even the most innocent object that affected her fancy.  Mrs. Willoughby thought that she understood Minnie before, but this little shriek at a lizard, from one who smiled at the brigands, struck her as a problem quite beyond her power to solve.