“But you’ve quite a lot in your jewel case, lovely old ones; you ought to wear them, Anne,” Mary protested, and Anne’s eyes had darkened as they always did in moments of emotion.
“They were my mother’s. Father gave them me years ago, and I always carry them about with me; but I never wear them,” she said quietly.
The remembrance of this little episode flashed through my mind as I saw her hold out her ringless hand,—begrimed now with dirt and smoke, with a purple mark like a bruise between the thumb and first finger, that showed me she had been one of the firing party.
Pavloff bared his shaggy head, and bent over the hand as if it had been that of an empress; then moved away and went plump on his knees before Loris.
“Where is he going?” I asked Anne, ranging my horse alongside.
“Back to his work, like the good man he is,” she said, her eyes fixed on Loris, who had raised the old steward and was speaking to him rapidly and affectionately. “He came thus far lest we should have need of him; perhaps also because he would say farewell to me,—since we shall not meet again. But now he will return and continue his duty at Zostrov as long as he is permitted to do so. That may not be long,—but still his post is there.”
“They will murder him, as some of them tried to murder the Duke last night,” I said. “You have heard of the explosion?”
She nodded, but made no comment, and, as Pavloff mounted and rode off alone, Loris also mounted and joined us with Vassilitzi, and the four of us started at a hand-gallop, a little ahead of the others. Loris rode on Anne’s right hand, I on her left, and I noticed, as I glanced at her from time to time, how weary and wistful her face was, when the transient smile had vanished; how wide and sombre the eyes that, as I knew of old, changed with every mood, so that one could never determine their color; at one moment a sparkling hazel, at another—as now—dark and mysterious as the sky on a starless night.
The last part of our route lay through thick woods, where the cold light of the dawn barely penetrated as yet, though the foliage was thin overhead, and the autumn leaves made a soft carpet on which our horses’ hoofs fell almost without a sound.
We seemed to move like a troop of shadows through that ghostly twilight. One could imagine it an enchanted forest, like those of our nursery tales, with evil things stirring in the brakes all about us, and watching us unseen. Once there came a long-drawn wail from near at hand; and a big wolf, homing to his lair at the dawning, trotted across the track just ahead, and bared his fangs in a snarl before he vanished. A few minutes later another sound rang weirdly above the stealthy whispers of the forest,—the scream of some creature in mortal fear and pain.