The dawn came slowly. Night, loth to unveil what the valley had to show, hung there long after the wooded knobs that rose along the ridge had begun to appear, looking like grey and misty islands in a sea of vapour. Many cried for the light--what night passes that some do not?--but none more impatiently than a woman, whose unquiet figure began with the first glimmer to pace the top of the hill. Sometimes she walked to and fro with her face to the sky; sometimes she stood and peered into the depths where the fires still glowed fitfully; or again listened with shrinking ears to the wailing that rose out of the darkness.
It was the Countess. She had lain down, because they had bidden her do so, and told her that nothing could be done while night lasted. But with the first dawn she was on foot, so impatient that her own people dared not come near her, so imperious that the general's troopers crept away abashed.
The fight in the valley and the dreadful things she had seen and heard at nightfall had shaken her nerves. The absence of her friends had finished the work. She was almost distraught this morning. If this was war--this merciless butchery, this infliction of horrible pain on man and beast--their screams still rang in her ears--she had seen enough. Only let her get her friends back, and escape to some place where these things would not happen, and she asked no more.
The light, as it grew stronger, the sun, as it rose, filling the sky with glory, failed to comfort her; for the one disclosed the dead, lying white and stripped in the valley below, like a flock of sheep grazing, the other seemed by its very cheerfulness to mock her. She was raging like a lioness, when the general at last appeared, and came towards her, his hat in his hand.
His eye had still the brightness, his cheek the flush of victory. He had lain much of the night, thinking his own thoughts, until he had become so wrapped in himself and his plans that his shrewdness was for once at fault, and he failed to read the signs in her face which his own soldiers had interpreted. He was all fire and triumph; she, sick of bloodshed and ambition. For the first time since they had come together, she was likely to see him as he was.
'Countess,' he said, as he stopped before her, 'you will do yourself harm, I fear. You were on foot, I am told, before it was light.'
'It is true,' she said, shuddering and restraining herself by an effort.
'It was foolish,' he replied. 'You may be sure that as soon as anything is heard the news will be brought to you. And to be missing is not to be dead--necessarily.'
'Thank you,' she answered, her lip quivering. She flashed a look of scorn at him, but he did not see it. Her hands opened and closed convulsively.
'He was last seen in the pursuit,' the general continued smoothly, flattering himself that in suppressing his own triumphant thoughts and purposes and talking her talk he was doing much. 'A score or more, of them got away together. It is quite possible that they carried him off a prisoner.'