“Poor little girl!” said the countess, kissing her on her forehead.
“Yes, for the time being they are all well,” answered the count. “Except me, Felix; I am as battered as an old tower about to fall.”
“The general is still depressed,” I remarked to Madame de Mortsauf.
“We all have our blue devils—is not that the English term?” she replied.
The whole party walked on towards the vineyard with the feeling that some serious event had happened. She had no wish to be alone with me. Still, I was her guest.
“But about your horse? why isn’t he attended to?” said the count.
“You see I am wrong if I think of him, and wrong if I do not,” remarked the countess.
“Well, yes,” said her husband; “there is a time to do things, and a time not to do them.”
“I will attend to him,” I said, finding this sort of greeting intolerable. “No one but myself can put him into his stall; my groom is coming by the coach from Chinon; he will rub him down.”
“I suppose your groom is from England,” she said.