The driver had succeeded in restoring the top of the landau to a precarious stability. Dieppe handed the lady down from the box-seat and into the interior. The driver mounted his perch; the lady leant out of the window to take farewell of her ally.
"Every hour was of value to me," she said, with a plain touch of emotion in her voice, "and but for you I should have been taken back to Sasellano. We shall meet again, I hope."
"I shall live in the hope," said he, with a somewhat excessive gallantry—a trick of which he could not cure himself.
The driver whipped up—he did not intend that either he or his horses, having escaped drowning, should die of cold. The equipage lumbered up the hill, its inmate still leaning out and waving her hand. Dieppe watched until the party reached the zigzags and was hidden from view, though he still heard the crack of the whip.
"Very interesting, very interesting!" he murmured to himself. "But now to business! Now for friend Guillaume and the Countess!" His face fell as he spoke. With the disappearance of excitement, and the cessation of exertion, he realised again the great sorrow that faced him and admitted of no evasion. He sighed deeply and sought his cigarette-case. Vain hope of comfort! His cigarettes were no more than a distasteful pulp. He felt forlorn, very cold, very hungry, also; for it was now between nine and ten o'clock. His heart was heavy as he prepared to mount the hill and finish his evening's work. He must see Guillaume; he must see the Countess; and then—
"Ah!" he cried, and stooped suddenly to the ground. A bright object lay plain and conspicuous on the road which had grown white again as it dried in the sharp wind. It was an oval locket of gold, dropped there, a few yards from the ford. It lay open—no doubt the jar of the fall accounted for that—face downwards. The Captain picked it up and examined it. He said nothing; his usual habit of soliloquy failed him for the moment; he looked at it, then round at the landscape. For the moonlight showed him a picture in the locket, and enabled him to make out a written inscription under it.
"What?" breathed he at last. "Oh, I can't believe it!" He looked again. "Oh, if that 's the lie of the land, my friend!" He smiled; then, in an apparent revulsion of feeling, he frowned angrily, and even shook his fist downstream, perhaps intending the gesture for some one in the village. Lastly, he shook his head sadly, and set off up the hill in the wake of the now vanished carriage; as he went, he whistled in a soft and meditative way. But before he started, he had assured himself that he in his turn had not dropped anything, and that M. Guillaume's partially depleted portfolio was still safe in his pocket, side by side with his own precious papers. And he deposited the locket he had found with these other valued possessions.
A few minutes' walking brought him to the Cross. The exercise had warmed him, the threatened stiffness of cold had passed; he ran lightly up the hill and down into the basin. There was no sign of M. Guillaume. The Captain, rather vexed, for he had business with that gentleman,—an explanation of a matter which touched his own honour to make, and an account which intimately concerned M. Guillaume to adjust,—entered the hut. In an instant his hand was grasped in an appealing grip, and the voice he loved best in the world (there was no blinking the fact, whatever might be thought of the propriety), cried, "Ah, you 're safe?"
"How touching that is!" thought the Captain. "She has a hundred causes for anxiety, but her first question is, 'You're safe?'" This was she whom he renounced, and this was she whom the Count of Fieramondi deceived. What were her trifling indiscretions beside her husband's infamy—the infamy betrayed and proved by the picture and inscription in the locket?
"I am safe, and you are safe," said he, returning the pressure of her hand. "And where is our friend outside?"