"Be at ease. Loan is the term we use between gentlemen—eh?" The Captain tried to curl his moist, uncurlable moustache.
And Paul de Roustache handed him back five thousand francs.
"My dear fellow!" murmured the Captain, as he stowed the notes in safety. He held out his hand; Paul de Roustache shook it and turned away. Dieppe stood watching him as he went, making not direct for the Sasellano road, but shaping a course straight up the hill, walking as though he hardly knew where he was going. So he passed out of the Captain's sight—and out of the list of the Countess of Fieramondi's creditors.
A little smile dwelt for a moment on Dieppe's face.
"I myself am very nearly a rascal sometimes," said he.
Crack! crack! The sound of a whip rang clear; the clatter of hoofs and the grind of a wheel on the skid followed. A carriage dashed down the hill from Sasellano. Paul de Roustache had seen it, and stooped low for a moment in instinctive fear of being seen. Captain Dieppe, on the other hand, cried "Bravo!" and began to walk briskly towards the ford. "How very lucky!" he reflected. "I will beg a passage; I have no fancy for another bath to-night."
CHAPTER VIII
THE CARRIAGE AT THE FORD
The direct issue between her Excellency and the innkeeper at Sasellano had ended as all such differences (save, of course, on points of morality) should—in a compromise. The lady would not resign herself to staying at Sasellano; the landlord would not engage to risk passenger, carriage, and horses in the flood. But he found and she accepted the services of a robust, stout-built fellow who engaged with the lady to drive her as far as the river and across it if possible, and promised the landlord to bring her and the equipage back in case the crossing were too dangerous. Neither party was pleased, but both consented, hoping to retrieve a temporary concession by ultimate victory. Moreover the lady paid the whole fare beforehand—not, the landlord precisely stipulated, to be returned in any event. So off her Excellency rattled in the wind and rain; and great was her triumph when the rain ceased, the wind fell, and the night cleared. She put her head out of the rackety old landau, whose dilapidated hood had formed a shelter by no means water-tight, and cried, "Who was right, driver?" But the driver turned his black cigar between his teeth, answering, "The mischief is done already. Well, we shall see!"