Then commenced a drive of which afterward the Countess dared not think. The figure neither moved nor spoke. Inside the carriage reigned the most complete silence. The horse’s feet clattered over rough stones, they turned through narrow, unfamiliar streets, so that she knew not even the direction they took. After a time the noise grew less. The horse padded along dirt roads, in darkness. Then the carriage stopped, and at last the shrouded figure moved and spoke.
“I regret, Countess, that my orders are to blindfold you.”
She drew herself up haughtily.
“That is not necessary, I think.”
“Very necessary, madame.”
She submitted ungracefully, while he bound a black cloth over her eyes. He drew it very close and knotted it behind. In the act his—fingers touched her face, and she felt them cold and clammy. The contact sickened her.
“Your hand, madame.”
She was led out of the carriage, and across soft earth, a devious course again, as though they avoided small obstacles. Once her foot touched something low and hard, like marble. Again, in the darkness, they stumbled over a mound. She knew where she was, then—in a graveyard. But which? There were many about the city.
An open space, the opening of a gate or door that squealed softly, a flight of steps that led downward, and a breath of musty, cold air, damp and cellar-like.
She was calmer now. Had they meant to kill her, there had been already a hundred chances. It was not death, then, that awaited her—at least, not immediate death. These precautions, too, could only mean that she was to be freed again, and must not know where she had been.