“A Polish Countess,” he answered, “whom I met in Prague and in Paris.”
“Why, what is she here for—alone?” questioned Mademoiselle de Séguy. “And will you not present me to her?” Her ardent desire to be gracious to any acquaintance of his showed in her eager words.
Luc smiled.
“I never knew her well enough,” he said, “and it seems she does not wish to speak to me.”
Certainly Carola, without a backward look, had disappeared in the crowd. Clémence seemed disappointed.
“I wish she had stayed,” she remarked sincerely.
Luc made no answer; he was wondering what had brought Carola to Aix. He had thought that she was still in Austria; he supposed she might be on her way to Avignon; yet he knew M. de Richelieu was in Paris, and under any circumstances it seemed curious that she should be alone at a public fête—she who had always affected such magnificence.
A little sigh from Clémence recalled him from his momentary reflection.
“It is cold,” she repeated timidly.
“Come out into the sun,” he answered, and they moved slowly away from the crowd, beyond the elms, and so beyond the fête, into a little slope of meadow land where the grass was yet untrod and green. The western distance, blue, hazed, and mysterious, was half hid by a belt of beech trees, whose boughs bent beneath a load of tawny, orange, gold, and crimson leaves.