He saw first the skirt of a green amazone, then the whole slim length of the body of a woman, a young woman, lying on the slope, one arm flung wide into the fern, the other crooked under her head. Only the breast of the amazone was darkly stained. His eyes travelled to her face. . . . “O my God!” he said softly, and the reins fell from his fingers. Gilbert slowly raised himself, and took off his hat, his eyes, too, riveted on the dead face of her who had been Célie d’Espaze.
There was a faint smile on her discoloured lips. A tress of the bright brown hair was caught in the dead bracken; a ruby glowed on the lace at her throat; but for her look she seemed cast there to sleep. The cold horror of the moment was broken by no words; it lasted like a spell while Louis, baring his head, sank to his knees and buried his face in his hands. Gilbert did not look at him. The gold and white room, the white dress and the gold couch, and the voice saying, “Reflect that in this changing world I may some day be needing help from you. . . . Next time that you are in Paris, my friend . . .” Instead of these he stood with Louis by the body of the “adventuress” with whose society he had not long ago taunted him. If only he had not said that. . . .
Louis raised his head at last, and taking the gauntleted hand that lay near him in the bracken he kissed it reverently and laid it back again. Then he turned a grey face on his cousin. “God knows how she came by this,” he said hoarsely. “We cannot leave her here.”
“She must have died instantly,” said Gilbert, half to himself. “I will go back and send a party. You will stay by her?”
Louis nodded without speaking, and Gilbert left him kneeling there.
They buried her that evening. In her grave-clothes she was more than ever the nun of Gilbert’s first impression. Where Louis spent the night Château-Foix did not enquire, but it was not in their room.
Months afterwards he learned the truth—and assumed that Louis knew it, too. Madame d’Espaze had quarrelled some two months earlier with Lecorrier, and had left him for a former admirer, the Marquis de Beaulieu, a revolutionary noble who commanded the National Guard of Montaigu. When the peasants took Montaigu De Beaulieu was killed, and, since he was cordially detested, his château was sacked. His mistress fled, alone; it was said in the direction of Châtillon. Further than that nothing was known; neither how she came to have lost her horse, nor whose the hand, Royalist or Republican, that shot her, nor what she was doing so far away from Châtillon. There were moments when Gilbert wondered whether she could possibly have been making for Chantemerle—if indeed she had been aware of its proximity—but that he should not know now. Her name was never mentioned again between Louis and himself; but it was many days before he, at least, could pass a clump of bracken without expecting to see its yellow fronds entangled with a woman’s hair.
CHAPTER XL
THE FIGHT AT THE BRIDGE
“To carry our faith like a blossom that’s thrust
In a sword-hilt for token;