Her next act was more surprising still. Drawing forth her handkerchief, she carefully wiped from the heel its caking of mud and snow. And there, in the leather just above the heel, was a double row of perforations, obviously caused by something sharp that had penetrated the leather from without.
“Vera,” said Pauline, with a strange look, “tell me what you think was the cause of these marks?”
The maid regarded them attentively for a moment, and then said, “They seem to me very like teeth-bites, my lady. See!” So saying, Vera slipped off her pretty little shoe, and by giving the heel a hearty bite, produced in the red leather a double row of marks, very similar in appearance to those in Benningsen’s Hessians. “He had strong teeth who bit this boot,” she added.
“My God!” murmured Pauline. “What has happened?” And the boot dropped from her trembling hand.
“My lady, you are ill.”
She had reason for her remark in Pauline’s sudden pallor. But the Baroness made no answer. She stood, silent and motionless, deep in thought; and when, after an interval of five minutes, Benningsen reappeared, she regarded him with a look so strange and repelling that he intuitively felt that his secret had become known to her.
“Now can one keep a thing from a woman?” he thought, as he drew on his Hessians.
“General, what Bible-verse did Paul hit upon yesterday?” she asked in a careless manner; and the General, off his guard for the moment, replied—
“‘Thou shalt bruise his heel.’”