My lady gave him opportunities. Several times I saw her try to draw him into conversation, and whenever General Tzerclas left her for a while she turned to the younger man and would have talked to him. But he seemed unable to respond. When he was not noisily gay, he rode like a mute. He seemed half sullen, half afraid; and she presently gave him up, but not before her efforts had caught Tzerclas' eye. The general had been called for some purpose to the rear of the column, and on his return found the two talking, my lady's attitude such that it was very evident she was the provocant. He did not try to resume his place, but fell in behind them; and riding there, almost, if not quite, within earshot, cast such ugly glances at them as more than confirmed me in the belief that in his own secret way he loved my mistress; and that, after a more dangerous fashion than the Waldgrave.
[Illustration: The general waited on her with the utmost attention, riding by her bridle-rein ...]
This was late in the afternoon, and another hour brought us who marched at the head of the column to our camping-ground for the night. We lay in a rugged, wooded valley, not very commodious, but chosen because only one high ridge divided it from a second valley, through which the main road and the river had their course. Our instructions were that the convoy, which was bound for Wallenstein's army then marching on Nuremberg, would pass through this second valley some time during the following day; but until the hour came for making the proper dispositions, all persons in our force were forbidden to mount the intervening ridge under pain of death. We had even to do without fires--lest the smoke should betray our presence--and for this one night lay under something like the strict discipline which I had expected to find prevailing in a military camp. The only fire that was permitted cooked the general's meal, which he shared with my lady and the Waldgrave and the principal officers.
Even so the order caused trouble. The pikemen and musketeers did not come in till an hour before midnight, when they trudged into camp dusty and footsore and murmuring at their leaders. When, in this state, they learned that fires were not to be lighted, disgust grew rapidly into open disobedience. On a sudden, in half a dozen quarters at once, flames flickered up, and the camp, dark before, became peopled in a moment with strange forms, whose eighteen-foot weapons and cumbrous headpieces flung long shadows across the valley.