Count Hannibal

The setting sun! Ay, for the lower part of the hill was growing cold;

the shore at its foot was grey. Then he had slept long, and the time was

come. He drew a deep breath and listened. But on all within and without

lay silence, a silence marked, rather than broken, by the dull fall of a

wave on the causeway. The day had been calm, but with the sunset a light

breeze was rising.

He set his teeth hard, and continued to listen. An hour before sunset

was the time they had named for the exchange. What did it mean? In five

minutes the sun would be below the horizon; already the zone of warmth on

the hillside was moving and retreating upwards. And Bigot and old

Badelon? Why had they left him while he slept? An hour before sunset!

Why, the room was growing grey, grey and dark in the corners, and--what

was that?

He started, so violently that he jarred his leg, and the pain wrung a

groan from him. At the foot of the bed, overlooked until then, a woman

lay prone on the floor, her face resting on her outstretched arms. She

lay without motion, her head and her clasped hands towards the loophole,

her thick, clubbed hair hiding her neck. A woman! Count Hannibal

stared, and, fancying he dreamed, closed his eyes, then looked again. It

was no phantasm. It was the Countess; it was his wife!

He drew a deep breath, but he did not speak, though the colour rose

slowly to his cheek. And slowly his eyes devoured her from head to foot,

from the hands lying white in the light below the window to the shod

feet; unchecked he took his fill of that which he had so much desired--the

seeing her! A woman prone, with all of her hidden but her hands: a

hundred acquainted with her would not have known her. But he knew her,

and would have known her from a hundred, nay from a thousand, by her

hands alone.

What was she doing here, and in this guise? He pondered; then he looked

from her for an instant, and saw that while he had gazed at her the sun

had set, the light had passed from the top of the hill; the world without

and the room within were growing cold. Was that the cause she no longer

lay quiet? He saw a shudder run through her, and a second; then it

seemed to him--or was he going mad?--that she moaned, and prayed in half-

heard words, and, wrestling with herself, beat her forehead on her arms,

and then was still again, as still as death. By the time the paroxysm

had passed, the last flush of sunset had faded from the sky, and the

hills were growing dark.