"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
looks contradicted, he rose hastily, wrapped himself in a
dressing-gown which lay on a chair, and began by locking a door near
the chimney through which the state bedroom was entered from the
reception rooms which communicated with the great staircase.
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