“You wear your trophy,” said Renée, and her horse reared and darted ahead.
The gentleman on each side of her struck into a trot. Beauchamp glanced at M. d’Henriel’s breast-decoration. Renée pressed the pace, and threading dense covers of foliage they reached the level of the valley, where for a couple of miles she led them, stretching away merrily, now in shadow, now in moonlight, between high land and meadow land, and a line of poplars in the meadows winding with the river that fed the vale and shot forth gleams of silvery disquiet by rustic bridge and mill.
The strangeness of being beside her, not having yet scanned her face, marvelling at her voice—that was like and unlike the Renée of old, full of her, but in another key, a mellow note, maturer—made the ride magical to Beauchamp, planting the past in the present like a perceptible ghost.
Renée slackened speed, saying: “Tourdestelle spans a branch of our little river. This is our gate. Had it been daylight I would have taken you by another way, and you would have seen the black tower burnt in the Revolution; an imposing monument, I am assured. However, you will think it pretty beside the stream. Do you come with us, M. le Comte?”
His answer was inaudible to Beauchamp; he did not quit them.
The lamp at the lodge-gates presented the young man’s face in full view, and Beauchamp thought him supremely handsome. He perceived it to be a lady’s glove that M. d’Henriel wore at his breast.
Renée walked her horse up the park-drive, alongside the bright running water. It seemed that she was aware of the method of provoking or reproving M. d’Henriel. He endured some minutes of total speechlessness at this pace, and abruptly said adieu and turned back.
Renée bounded like a vessel free of her load. “But why should we hurry?” said she, and checked her course to the walk again. “I hope you like our Normandy, and my valley. You used to love France, Nevil; and Normandy, they tell me, is cousin to the opposite coast of England, in climate, soil, people, it may be in manners too. A Beauchamp never can feel that he is a foreigner in Normandy. We claim you half French. You have grander parks, they say. We can give you sunlight.”
“And it was really only the wish to see me?” said Beauchamp.
“Only, and really. One does not live for ever—on earth; and it becomes a question whether friends should be shadows to one another before death. I wrote to you because I wished to see you: I was impatient because I am Renée.”