Did you
not see her?"
"No, sire," I said, inexpressibly alarmed--I could take it for
nothing but fantasy--"I saw no one."
"And I saw her as clearly as I see you," he answered. "She wore
the yellow ostrich-feather she wore last year, and rode her
favourite chestnut horse with a white stocking. But I could have
sworn to her by her figure alone; and she waved her hand to me."
"But, sire, out of the many ladies riding to-day--"
"There is no lady wearing a yellow feather," he answered
passionately. "And the horse! And I knew her, man! Besides,
she waved to me! And, for the others--why should they turn from
the hunt and take to the woods?"
I could not answer this, but I looked at him in fear; for, as it
was impossible that the Princess de Conde could be here, I saw no
alternative but to think him smitten with madness. The
extravagance of the passion which he had entertained for her, and
the wrath into which the news of her flight with her young
husband had thrown him, to say nothing of the depression under
which he had since suffered, rendered the idea not so unlikely as
it now seems.
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