ied Lucan. "Nevertheless, I am uneasy.
Julia has just gone out on horseback. You have, doubtless, seen and heard
her as I have myself, since you are up."

"Yes," said Moras, who had continued to gaze upon Lucan with an expression
of indescribable stupor; "yes," he repeated, recovering himself, not
without difficulty, "and I am glad, really very glad to see you, my dear
friend."

While uttering these simple words, the voice of Moras became hesitating; a
damp cloud obscured his eyes.

"Where can she be going at this hour?" he resumed with his usual firmness
of speech.

"I do not know; merely some new fancy, I suppose. At any rate, she has
seemed to me lately more strange, more moody, and I feel uneasy. Let us
try and follow her, if you like."

"Let us go, my friend," said the count after a pause of singular
hesitation.

They both left the chateau together, taking their fowling-pieces with
them, in order to induce the belief that they were going, according to a
quite frequent habit, to shoot sea-birds. At the moment of selecting a
direction, Monsieur de Moras turned to Lucan with an inquiring glance.

"I see no danger," said Lucan, "save in the direction of the cliffs. A few
words that escaped her yesterday lead me to fear that the peril may be
there; but with her horse, she is compelled to make a long detour. By
cutting across the woods, we'll be there ahead of her."

They entered the timber to the west of the chateau, and walked in silence
and with rapid steps.

The path they had taken led them directly to the plateau overlooking the
cliffs they had visited the previous day. The woods extended in that
direction in an irregular triangle, the last trees of which almost touched
the very brink of the cliff.

As they were approaching with feverish steps that extreme point, Lucan
suddenly stopped.

"Listen!" he said.

The sound of a horse's gallop upon the hard soil could be distinctly
heard. They ran.

A sloping bank of moderate elevation divided the wood from the plateau.
This they climbed half way with the help of trailing branches; screened
then by the bushes and the foliage, they beheld before them a most
impressive spectacle. At a short distance to the left, Julia was coming on
at break-neck speed; she was following the oblique line of the woods,
apparently shaping her course straight toward the edge of the cliff. They
thought at first that her horse had run away, but they saw that she was
lashing him w