Racked by such thoughts she did not hear his step, and it was his shadow falling across her feet which first warned her of his presence.  She looked up, saw him, and involuntarily recoiled.  Then, seeing the change in his face—­

“Oh!  Monsieur,” she stammered, affrighted, her hand pressed to her side, “I ask your pardon!  You startled me!”

“So it seems,” he answered.  And he stood over her regarding her dryly.

“I am not quite—­myself yet,” she murmured.  His look told her that her start had betrayed her feelings.

Alas! the plan of taking a woman by force has drawbacks, and among others this one:  that he must be a sanguine husband who deems her heart his, and a husband without jealousy, whose suspicions are not aroused by the faintest flush or the lightest word.  He knows that she is his unwillingly, a victim, not a mistress; and behind every bush beside the road and behind every mask in the crowd he espies a rival.

Moreover, where women are in question, who is always strong?  Or who can say how long he will pursue this plan or that?  A man of sternest temper, Count Hannibal had set out on a path of conduct carefully and deliberately chosen; knowing—­and he still knew—­that if he abandoned it he had little to hope, if the less to fear.  But the proof of fidelity which the Countess had just given him had blown to a white heat the smouldering flame in his heart, and Madame St. Lo’s gibes, which should have fallen as cold water alike on his hopes and his passion, had but fed the desire to know the best.  For all that, he might not have spoken now, if he had not caught her look of affright; strange as it sounds, that look, which of all things should have silenced him and warned him that the time was not yet, stung him out of patience.  Suddenly the man in him carried him away.

“You still fear me, then?” he said, in a voice hoarse and unnatural.  “Is it for what I do or for what I leave undone that you hate me, Madame?  Tell me, I beg, for—­”

“For neither!” she said, trembling.  His eyes, hot and passionate, were on her, and the blood had mounted to his brow.  “For neither!  I do not hate you, Monsieur!”

“You fear me then?  I am right in that.”

“I fear—­that which you carry with you,” she stammered, speaking on impulse and scarcely knowing what she said.

He started, and his expression changed.  “So?” he exclaimed.  “So?  You know what I carry, do you?  And from whom?  From whom,” he continued in a tone of menace, “if you please, did you get that knowledge?”

“From M. La Tribe,” she muttered.  She had not meant to tell him.  Why had she told him?

He nodded.  “I might have known it,” he said.  “I more than suspected it.  Therefore I should be the more beholden to you for saving the letters.  But”—­he paused and laughed harshly—­“it was out of no love for me you saved them.  That too I know.”