“Yes,” answered Mademoiselle Brun, with an uneasy glance.
What was Colonel Gilbert going to say?
He stood for a moment looking down into the valley, while Denise and Mademoiselle Brun waited.
“And you have perceived nothing that would seem to confirm the gossip current regarding your—enemy?” he asked, with a good-natured, deprecatory laugh.
“What gossip?” asked mademoiselle, bluntly.
The colonel shrugged his shoulders without looking round.
“Oh,” he answered, “one does not believe all one hears. Besides, there are many who think that in such a remote spot as Corsica, it is not necessary to observe the ordinary—what shall I say?—etiquette of society.”
He laughed uneasily, and spread out his hands as if, for his part, he would rather dismiss the subject. But Mademoiselle Brun could be frankly feminine at times.
“What is the gossip to which you refer?” she asked again.
“Oh, I do not believe a word of it—though I, myself, have seen. Well, mademoiselle—you will excuse my frankness?—they say there is some one in the château—some one whom the count wishes to conceal, you understand.”