For some time I stood in ambush watching her, and with each minute I grew more impatient. At last I began to doubt--to have strange thoughts. The green walls were growing dark. The sun was sinking; a sharp, white peak, miles and miles away, which closed the vista of the ride began to flush and colour rosily. Finally, but not before I had had leisure to grow uneasy, she stood up and walked on more slowly. I waited, as usual, until the next turning hid her. Then I hastened after her, and, warily passing round the corner--came face to face with her!
I knew all in a moment--that she had fooled me, tricked me, lured me away. Her face was white with scorn, her eyes blazed; her figure, as she confronted me, trembled with anger and infinite contempt.
"You spy!" she cried. "You hound! You--gentleman! Oh, mon Dieu! if you are one of us--if you are really not canaille--we shall pay for this some day! We shall pay a heavy reckoning in the time to come! I did not think," she continued--her every syllable like the lash of a whip--"that there was anything so vile as you in this world!"
I stammered something--I do not know what. Her words burned into me--into my heart! Had she been a man, I would have struck her dead!
"You thought you deceived me yesterday," she continued, lowering her tone, but with no lessening of the passion and contempt which curled her lip and gave fulness to her voice. "You plotter! You surface trickster! You thought it an easy task to delude a woman--you find yourself deluded. God give you shame that you may suffer!" she continued mercilessly. "You talked of Clon, but Clon beside you is the most honourable of men!"
"Madame," I said hoarsely--and I know my face was grey as ashes--"let us understand one another."
"God forbid!" she cried, on the instant. "I would not soil myself!"
"Fie! Madame," I said, trembling. "But then, you are a woman. That should cost a man his life!"
She laughed bitterly.
"You say well," she retorted. "I am not a man. Neither am I Madame. Madame de Cocheforêt has spent this afternoon--thanks to your absence and your imbecility--with her husband. Yes, I hope that hurts you!" she went on, savagely snapping her little white teeth together. "To spy and do vile work, and do it ill, Monsieur Mouchard--Monsieur de Mouchard, I should say--I congratulate you!"