further hesitation, lifted the sheet which Thibault had thrown back over the face of the dead man; Thibault then saw that it was the Countess.
“Alas!” she said, “what they told me was true!”
Then she fell on her knees, praying and sobbing. Her prayer being ended, she rose again, kissed the pale forehead of the dead, and the blue marks of the wound through which the soul had fled.
“O my well-beloved, my Raoul;” she murmured, “who will tell me the name of your murderer? who will help me to avenge your death?” As the Countess finished speaking, she gave a cry and started back; she seemed to hear a voice that answered, “I will!” and something had shaken the green serge curtain.
The Countess however was no chickenhearted woman; she took the candle that was burning at the head of the bed and went and looked behind the curtain; but no creature was to be seen, a closed door was all that met her eye. She put back the candle, took a pair of gold scissors from a little pocket case, cut off a curl of the dead man’s hair, placed the curl in a black velvet sachet which hung over her heart, gave one last kiss to her dead lover, laid the sheet over his face, and left the house. Just as she was crossing the threshold, she met the priest, and drawing back, drew her veil more closely over her face.
“Who are you?” asked the priest.
“I am Grief,” she answered, and the priest made way for her to pass.
The Countess and her attendant had come on foot, and were returning in the same manner, for the distance between Puiseux and Mont-Gobert was not much more than half-a-mile. When about halfway along their road, a man, who had been hiding behind a willow tree,