"I suffer much," she answered.

"Well, my pretty one, it is no crime to suffer; why did you tremble
when I looked at you? Alas! what must I do to be loved?" The wrinkles
of his forehead between the eyebrows deepened. "I see plainly you are
afraid of me," he added, sighing.

Prompted by the instinct of feeble natures the countess interrupted
the count by moans, exclaiming:--

"I fear a miscarriage! I clambered over the rocks last evening and
tired myself."

Hearing those words, the count cast so horribly suspicious a look upon
his wife, that she reddened and shuddered. He mistook the fear of the
innocent creature for remorse.

"Perhaps it is the beginning of a regular childbirth," he said.

"What then?" she said.

"In any case, I must have a proper man here," he said. "I will fetch
one."

The gloomy look which accompanied these words overcame the countess,
who fell back in the bed with a moan, caused more by a sense of her
fate than by the agony of the coming crisis; that moan convinced the
count of the justice of the suspicions that were rising in his mind.
Affecting a calmness which the tones of his voice, his gestures, and