But here was another difficulty--Lucia could not be found. The right wing was searched without result; she was nowhere. On the chance, unlikely indeed but possible, that she had taken advantage of the new state of things, they searched the left wing too--with an equal absence of result. Lucia was nowhere in the house; so it was reported. The Count was very much surprised.
"Can she have gone out at this time of night?" he cried.
The Countess was not much surprised. She well understood how Lucia might have gone out a little way--far enough, say, to look for Captain Dieppe, and make him aware of how matters stood. But she did not suggest this explanation to her husband; explanations are to be avoided when they themselves require too much explaining.
"It's very fine now," said she, looking out of the window. "Perhaps she's just gone for a turn on the road."
"What for?" asked the Count, spreading out his hands in some bewilderment.
The Countess, in an extremity, once more invoked the aid of the Bishop of Mesopotamia.
"Perhaps, dear," she said gently, "to think it over--to reflect in quiet on what she has learnt and been advised." And she added, as an artistic touch, "To think it over under the stars, dear Andrea."
The Count, betraying a trifle of impatience, turned to the servant.
"Run down the road," he commanded, "and see if the Countess Lucia is anywhere about." He returned to his wife's side. "One good thing about it is that we can have our talk out," said he.
"Yes, but let 's leave the horrid past and talk about the future," urged the Countess, with affection--and no doubt with wisdom also.
The servant, who in obedience to the Count's order ran down the road towards the village, did not see the Countess Lucia. That lady, mistrusting the explicitness of her hurried note, had stolen out into the garden, and was now standing hidden in the shadow of the barricade, straining her eyes down the hill towards the river and the stepping-stones. There lay the shortest way for the Captain to return--and of course, she had reasoned, he would come the shortest way. She did not, however, allow for the Captain's pardonable reluctance to get wet a third time that night. He did not know the habits of the river, and he distrusted the stepping-stones. After his experience he was all for a bridge. Moreover he did not hurry back to the Castle; he had much to think over, and no inviting prospect lured him home on the wings of hope. What hope was there? What hope of happiness either for himself or for the lady whom he loved? If he yielded to his love, he wronged her--her and his own honour. If he resisted, he must renounce her--aye, and leave her, not to a loving husband, but to one who deceived her most grossly and most cruelly, in a way which made her own venial errors seem as nothing in the Captain's partial, pitying eyes. In the distress of these thoughts he forgot his victories: how he had disposed of Paul de Roustache, how he had defeated M. Guillaume, how his precious papers were safe, and even how the Countess was freed from all her fears. It was her misery he thought of now, not her fears. For she loved him. And in his inmost heart he knew that he must leave her.