Then she laughed.

And as Count Hannibal, at whom the laugh was aimed, did not heed her, she laughed again.

And she hummed the line of Ronsard.
Still he would not be roused, and, piqued, she had recourse to words.
"I wonder what you would do," she said, "if the old lover followed us, and she went off with him!" "She would not go," he answered coldly, and without looking up.
"But if he rode off with her ?" "She would come back on her feet!" Madame St.Lo's prudence was not proof against that.

She had the woman's inclination to hide a woman's secret; and she had not intended, when she laughed, to do more than play with the formidable man with whom so few dared to play.

Now, stung by his tone and his assurance, she must needs show him that his trustfulness had no base.