“_Hein--hein--c'est drôle_,” he muttered, and the girl remembered that in the old friendship between the brilliant, middle-aged diplomatist and the little child they had always spoken French. She liked to hear him speak his own language, for in his lips it received full justice: it was the finest tongue spoken on this earth. But she did not feel disposed just then to humour him. She looked at him wonderingly as his deep eyes wandered over the scene.
While they stood there, something--probably a kestrel--disturbed the rooks dwelling in the summits of the still elms across the moat, and they rose simultaneously in the air with long-drawn cries.
“Ah! Ah--h!” said the Vicomte, with a singular smile.
“What is it?” she inquired in the language she had always spoken to this man.
He turned and walked beside her, suiting his steps to hers, for some moments before replying.
“I was not here at all,” he said at length, apologetically; “I was far away from you. It was impolite. I am sorry.”
He intended that she should laugh, and she did so softly. “Where were you?” she inquired, glancing at him beneath her golden lashes.
“There is,” he said at length, “an old _château_ in Morbihan--many miles from a railway--in the heart of a peaceful country. It has a moat like this--there are elms--there are rooks that swing up into the air like that and call--and one does not know why they do it, and what they are calling. Listen, little girl--they are calling something. What is it? I think I was _there_. It was impolite--I am sorry, Miss Carew.”
She laughed again sympathetically and without mirth; for she was meant to laugh.
He looked back over his shoulder at times as if the calling of the rooks jarred upon his nerves.
“I do not think I like them--” he said, “now.”
He was not apparently disposed to be loquacious as he had been at first. Possibly the rooks had brought about this change. Hilda also had her thoughts. At times she glanced at the water with a certain shrinking in her heart. She had not yet forgotten the moments she had passed at the edge of the moat the night before. They walked right round the moat and down a little pathway through the elm wood without speaking. The rooks had returned to their nests and only called to each other querulously at intervals.