She spoke in her usual cold, rather precise accents, and her delicate face was rather sad and tired in expression.
“You were not at the fête last night,” she added. “I wished to present you to M. Amelot.”
“Madame,” he answered, “I was there, but certainly did not see you.”
The Countess leant a little way from the window of the coach; she had a gold and scarlet figured scarf round her dark, unpowdered hair.
“What has happened?” she asked. “You look—strange.”
Luc remembered that he had not been to bed that night, and was, despite his inner exaltation, feeling giddy and weary. Of late he could ill stand any fatigue; he recalled also the suicide that for the moment he had completely forgotten.
“A man died this morning,” he answered gravely, “in the room opposite mine—died by his own hand, Madame.”
“You must be so used to death,” she answered. She looked up at the house, and straight, as by a kind of instinct, at the drawn heavy curtains of the painter’s room. “Who was he?” she asked.
“Why should I sadden you?” he answered. “And who the man was, no one knows.”
“Oh,” she answered quickly, “it does not sadden me at all.” She smiled wistfully. “But you are very pale, Monsieur le Marquis.”