"Oh, how could I be so silly! How could I put myself in such a position? How could I consent to anything of the sort? I don't know what 'll happen. I have n't got fifty thousand francs! Oh, Emilia, how could you do it? I don't know what to do! And I 'm all alone--alone to face this fearful trouble!" Indeed the Count, led no doubt by the penetrating sympathy of love, seemed to have divined her feelings with a wonderful accuracy.
She glanced up at the clock, it was nearly five. The smile that came on her face was sad and timid; yet it was a smile of hope. "Perhaps he 'll be able to help me," she thought. "He has no money, no--only fifty francs, poor man! But he seems to be brave--oh, yes, he 's brave. And I think he's clever. I 'll go to the meeting-place and take the note. He 's the only chance." She rose and walked to a mirror. She certainly looked a little less woe-begone now, and she examined her appearance with an earnest criticism. The smile grew more hopeful, a little more assured, as she murmured to herself, "I think he 'll help me, if he can, you know; because--well, because--" For an instant she even laughed. "And I rather like him too, you know," she ended by confiding to the mirror. These latter actions and words were not in such complete harmony with Count Andrea's mental picture of the lady on the other side of the barricade.
Betaking herself to the room from which she had first beheld Captain Dieppe's face--not, as the Count would have supposed, as a consequence of any design, but by the purest and most unexpected chance--she arrayed herself in a short skirt and thick boots, and wrapped a cloak round her, for a close, misty rain was already falling, and the moaning of the wind in the trees promised a stormy evening. Then she stole out and made for the gate in the right wall of the gardens. The same old servant who had brought the note was there to let her out.
"You will be gone long, Contessa?" she asked.
"No, Maria, not long. If I am asked for, say I am lying down."
"Not very likely," she replied with a laugh, in which the servant joined. "But if he does, I am absolutely not to be seen, Maria." And with another little laugh she began to skirt the back of the gardens so as to reach the main road, and thus make her way by the village to the Cross on the hill, and the little hut in the hollow behind it.