You have heaped insult on my sex and consequently on me.

I expect you to make reparation for that by--being very nice to me." She looked him deep in the eyes and stretched out her hand, which he seized in confusion and pressed.

Suddenly he let it drop.

The countess looked up in surprise, and following Wilhelm's gaze, she caught sight of the hotel wit and his lady coming along the deep pathway that ran round the foot of the wooded hill, on the slope of which they were sitting.
"Oh,--what do these common people matter ?" exclaimed the countess in a tone of vexation.

"And what is the harm, if they do see us?
They will only boast, when they get back to their shop in Paris, that they saw a great lady in Ault." But for all that, the dangerously sweet spell of the moment was broken, and did not return before Anne arrived, whom Fido ran sneezing and wriggling to meet.
For the rest of the day Wilhelm was silent and thoughtful, seeming to awake from a dream each time the countess spoke to him at dinner.