“Not a soul.”
“A woman dressed in black, walking very quickly toward the station?”
“I see no one at all, sur. Be there onything wrong at all?”
“I can’t tell. I hope not. You think, if any one passed along this road, they must go to the station?”
“Unless they stopped in the fields.”
“Is your horse very tired?”
“No—he bain’t so fresh as he moight be, but——”
“I want to return to the station for a few minutes, and after that to resume my way to the barracks,” said Paul Desfrayne. “Drive as fast as you can.”
So firmly persuaded was he of the reality of Lucia Guiscardini’s appearance on this lonely spot that he was resolved to seek some information of the clerk and porters at the railway. He reentered the shaky old vehicle; the stolid old driver whipped the weary old horse, and in a minute they were returning the way they came.
There was just a possibility that he might surprise her at the station. What conceivable motive could she have had for coming hither? Probably to see Gilardoni, her legal and legitimate husband. But why visit him in this secret manner, when at any moment she could have commanded his presence at a place infinitely more suitable? There was not much doubt that her apparition boded evil.