"Alas! Henry," said his friend, "will you never lose that gasping voice and that frantic gesticulation? You always act as if you had just started a hare, and as if you took the people you were talking to for uncoupled hounds."
"To horse! to horse!" cried Henry. "Lady Lavinia Blake is in the saddle; she is about starting for Gèdres with ten other young madcaps and Heaven knows how many beaux, the Comte de Morangy at their head—which does not mean that she has not the Comte de Morangy in her head, be it understood!"
"Silence, clown!" cried Lionel. "To horse, as you say, and let us be off!"
The riding-party had the start of them. The road to Gèdres is a steep path, a sort of staircase cut in the rock, skirting the precipice, presenting innumerable obstacles to horses, innumerable real dangers to their riders. Lionel started off at a gallop. Henry thought that he was mad; but, considering that his honor was involved in not being left behind, he rode after him. Their arrival created a strange effect on the caravan. Lavinia shuddered at sight of those two reckless creatures riding along the edge of a frightful abyss. When she recognized Lionel and her cousin, she turned pale and nearly fell from her horse. The Comte de Morangy noticed it, and did not take his eyes from her face. He was jealous.
His jealousy acted as an additional spur to Lionel. Throughout the day, he fought obstinately for Lavinia's slightest glance. The difficulty of speaking to her, the excitement of the ride, the emotions aroused by the sublime spectacle of the region through which they rode, the clever and always good-humored resistance of Lady Blake, her skill in managing her horse, her courage, her grace, the words, always natural and always poetic, in which she described her sensations,—all combined to stir Sir Lionel to the depths of his being. It was a very fatiguing day for the poor woman, beset by two lovers between whom she tried to hold the scales even; so that she accorded a grateful welcome to her jovial cousin and his noisy nonsense, when he spurred his horse between her and her adorers.
At night-fall, the sky was covered with clouds. A severe storm seemed imminent. The riders quickened their pace, but they were still more than a league from Saint-Sauveur when the storm burst. It grew very dark; the horses were frightened, and the Comte de Morangy's ran away with him. The little cavalcade became scattered, and the utmost efforts of the guides, who accompanied them on foot, were required to prevent some serious accident from bringing to a melancholy close a day that had begun so merrily.
Lionel, lost in the appalling darkness, compelled to walk along the edge of the cliff, leading his horse, for fear of falling over the precipice with him, was tormented by the keenest disquietude. He had lost sight of Lavinia, despite all his efforts, and had been seeking her anxiously for fifteen minutes, when a flash of lightning revealed the figure of a woman seated on a rock just above the road. He stopped, listened, and recognized Lady Blake's voice; but a man was with her; it could be no one but Monsieur de Morangy. Lionel cursed him in his heart; and, bent upon disturbing his rival's happiness, if he could do no more, he walked toward the couple as best he could. What was his joy on recognizing Henry with his cousin! He, like the kind-hearted, devil-may-care comrade he was, gave up his place to him, and walked away to hold the horses.
Nothing is so solemn and magnificent as the tumult of a storm in the mountains. The loud voice of the thunder, rumbling over the chasms, is repeated and echoes loudly in their depths; the wind, lashing the tall fir-trees and forcing them against the perpendicular cliff as a garment clings to the human form, also plunges into the gorges and utters shrill, long-drawn laments like sobs. Lavinia, absorbed in contemplation of the imposing spectacle, listened to the numberless noises of the storm-riven mountain, waiting until another flash should cast its bluish glare over the landscape. She started when it showed her Sir Lionel seated by her side, in the place occupied by her cousin a moment before. Lionel thought that she was frightened by the storm, and he took her hand to reassure her. Another flash showed her to him, with one elbow resting on her knee, and her chin on her hand, gazing enthusiastically at the wonderful scene produced by the raging elements. "Great heaven!" she exclaimed; "how beautiful it is! how dazzling and soft at once that blue glare! Did you see the jagged edges of the rock that gleamed like sapphires, and that livid background against which the ice-clad peaks towered aloft like giant spectres in their shrouds? Did you notice, too, that, in the sudden passage from darkness to light and from light to darkness, everything seemed to move and waver, as if the mountains were tottering to their fall?"
"I see nothing but you, Lavinia," he said, vehemently; "I hear no voice but yours, I breathe no air but your breath, I have no emotion except that of feeling that you are near me. Do you know that I love you madly? Yes, you know it; you must have seen it to-day, and perhaps you wanted it to be so. Very well! if that is so, enjoy your triumph. I am at your feet, I ask you to forgive me and to forget the past,—I ask it with my face in the dust; I ask you to give me the future, oh! I ask it with passionate fervor, and you must grant my request, Lavinia; for I want you with all my heart, and I have rights over you——"
"Rights?" she repeated, withdrawing her hand.