She did not speak a word; they mistook her silence for lack of interest, and fearing to stay longer, said "good night" once more, and went with boyish steps down the hillside together.
CHAPTER XI
THE VIGIL OF TRAGEDY
Lily watched the boys go down the hillside, and when they were lost to view she did not move from the door of the chalet. An onlooker might have said that her eyes searched the heights for tidings they alone could give her. A bitter wind blowing up the valley, a sky pregnant with omens of tempest, did not drive her back to the shelter of the house. She was unconscious of the cold, and took a cloak from the saturnine maid with a smile and a protest.
"I really do not want it, Louise—I don't feel the cold."
"But, Madame, it is going to snow; you will be ill, Madame, and no one to nurse you."
Lily put the cloak about her shoulders, and then asked the girl another question.
"Can you see a lantern upon the hillside, Louise, up there below Vermala?" The maid, grown curious, came and stood with her, but declared she could see nothing.
"There were gendarmes by here just now, Madame. I know them both, Albert and Philip, from Sion; there will have been trouble at the hotel, then; they would not send Monsieur Albert if it were not so."
Lily nodded her head.