There was a pause. Then Serge Renine said, smiling, with his eyes fixed on
hers and in a voice which she alone could hear:

"I am sure that you'll keep your promise and that you'll let me come with
you. It would be better."

"For whom? For you, you mean?"

"For you, too, I assure you."

She coloured slightly, but did not reply, shook hands with a few people
around her and left the room.

A groom was holding the horse at the foot of the steps. She mounted and set
off towards the woods beyond the park.

It was a cool, still morning. Through the leaves, which barely quivered,
the sky showed crystalline blue. Hortense rode at a walk down winding
avenues which in half an hour brought her to a country-side of ravines and
bluffs intersected by the high-road.

She stopped. There was not a sound. Rossigny must have stopped his engine
and concealed the car in the thickets around the If cross-roads.

She was five hundred yards at most from that circular space. After
hesitating for a few seconds, she dismounted, tied her horse carelessly, so
that he could release himself by the least effort and return to the house,
shrouded her face in the long brown veil that hung over her shoulders and
walked on.