The road to the château leads upwards from Culoz, and is a trifle hot and dusty. Alan wondered dumbly whether Cora had an object in dragging him so far away from the inn, and what that object was. But he took small annoyances patiently. It was something gained, at least, that his wife should seem content. Anything was better than tearing rage or violent hysterical weeping, which were the phases of temper most frequently presented to his view. On this occasion she appeared pleased and happy. He surprised a touch of malignity in her tones, a glance of evil meaning now and then; but he did not greatly care. Cora could not keep a secret. If she had any ill-will or ill intention towards him he was sure to know it before long.
"I am tired," she said at last, abruptly. "Let us sit down and rest. Look, here is an entrance into the park of the château. Shall we go in?"
"Is it open to the public?" said Alan, with an Englishman's instinctive fear of trespassing. For, although he had had a French grandmother, and sometimes boasted himself of French descent, he was essentially English in his ideas. Cora laughed him to scorn.
"I go where I will," she said, "and nobody finds it in his heart to turn me out. Courage, mon ami, I will protect you, if necessary. Follow me!"
Piqued by her tone, he opened the gate for her, and they passed from the hot, white road into the green demesnes of the Count who owned the château above Culoz. It struck Alan that his wife knew the way wonderfully well. She turned without hesitation into a path which led them to a wooden seat shaded by two great trees, and so situated that it could not be seen by anyone passing on the high road. Here she seated herself and looked up at her husband with a defiant smile.
"You have been here before?" he said suddenly.
She nodded. "Precisely, mon ami, I have been here before. And with whom? With M. de Hauteville, when you imagined me suffering from a migraine a few days ago. Surely you did not think that it was his first appearance when he arrived at the hotel, the day before yesterday?"
"I do not wish to discuss M. de Hauteville," said Alan turning away.
"But perhaps I wish to discuss him. We discussed you at full length—that day last week. We chronicled your vices, your weaknesses, your meannesses in detail. One thing I might have told him, which I left out—the fact that you are no gentleman, not even bourgeois—a mere peasant clown. He would not have let you measure swords with him if he had known the baseness of your origin, my friend!"
Alan's lips moved as if he would have spoken, but he restrained himself. He saw that she wanted him to respond, to lose his temper, to give her some cause of complaint, some opening for recrimination; and he resolved that he would not yield to her desire. She might abuse him as she would and he would not reply. She would cease when she was tired—and not till then.