She dismounted before he had divined her intentions, and drew a silver flask from her sash, and held it out to him in her white fur gloved hands.
“Only a little poor wine,” she murmured humbly, and she had the cup ready and the red wine poured out.
He thanked her gravely and drank with distaste; their heavy gloves touched as he handed the horn goblet back to her and again their eyes met.
In the pale, clear winter morning he looked dishevelled, pallid, and sad, but his eyes were steady, and held the same look as had lightened them in the chapel of St. Wenceslas.
“If there are no more storms, we shall do very well,” he remarked quietly. “I think there are no more than twenty leagues to Eger, and M. de Saxe took this route last year with but little loss.”
“Not in this weather,” returned the Countess Carola. “And M. de Belleisle is not Maurice de Saxe.”
Both her remarks were true, but the Marquis would not confirm them; he bowed gravely, as if displeased, and passed down the rocky path.
She remained beside the silver fir looking after him. The cold clouds had closed over the feeble sun and the wind blew more icy; all the sounds of a moving camp came with a sharp clearness through the pure, glacial air.
The Marquis made his way up the ascent to where his regiment bivouacked. His progress was slow; the sky became darker and lower as he ascended, and his way was marked by the frozen dead and the unconscious dying. He turned a point of rock to see the figure of Georges d’Espagnac standing at the edge of a little precipice fanning some glimmering sticks into a flame. Then the snow began; suddenly a few flakes, then a dense storm that blended heaven and earth in one whirl of white and cold.