arful trouble!" Indeed the Count, led no
doubt by the penetrating sympathy of love, seemed to have divined her
feelings with a wonderful accuracy.

She glanced up at the clock, it was nearly five. The smile that came
on her face was sad and timid; yet it was a smile of hope. "Perhaps he
'll be able to help me," she thought. "He has no money, no--only fifty
francs, poor man! But he seems to be brave--oh, yes, he 's brave. And
I think he's clever. I 'll go to the meeting-place and take the note.
He 's the only chance." She rose and walked to a mirror. She
certainly looked a little less woe-begone now, and she examined her
appearance with an earnest criticism. The smile grew more hopeful, a
little more assured, as she murmured to herself, "I think he 'll help
me, if he can, you know; because--well, because--" For an instant she
even laughed. "And I rather like him too, you know," she ended by
confiding to the mirror. These latter actions and words were not in
such complete harmony with Count Andrea's mental picture of the lady on
the other side of the barricade.

Betaking herself to the room from which she had first beheld Captain
Dieppe's face--not, as the Count would have supposed, as a consequence
of any design, but by the purest and most unexpected chance--she
arrayed herself in a short skirt and thick boots, and wrapped a cloak
round her, for a close, misty rain was already falling, and the moaning
of the wind in the trees promised a stormy evening. Then she stole out
and made for the gate in the right wall of the gardens. The same old
servant who had brought the note was there to let her out.

"You will be gone long, Contessa?" she asked.

"No, Maria, not long. If I am asked for, say I am lying down."

"Who should ask for you? The Count?"

"Not very likely," she replied with a laugh, in which the servant
joined. "But if he does, I am absolutely not to be seen, Maria." And
with another little laugh she began to skirt the back of the gardens so
as to reach the main road, and thus make her way by the village to the
Cross on the hill, and the little hut in the hollow behind it.

Almost at the same moment Captain Dieppe, cursing his fortune, his
folly, and the weather, with the collar of his coat turned up, his hat
crashed hard on his head, and (just in case of accidents) his revolver
in his pocket, came out into the garden and began to descend the hill
towards where the stepping-stones gave him