Sometimes it seemed as if something irritated Gilberte. Her sharp tones would be borne on the breeze to the ears of the couple loitering behind, and the comte would say to Jeanne, with a smile:
“I don’t think my wife got out of bed the right side this morning.”
One evening, as they were returning home, the comtesse began to spur her mare, and then pull her in with sudden jerks on the rein.
“Take care, or she’ll run away with you,” said Julien two or three times.
“So much the worse for me; it’s nothing to do with you,” she replied, in such cold, hard tones that the clear words rang out over the fields as if they were actually floating in the air.
The mare reared, kicked, and foamed at the mouth and the comte cried out anxiously:
“Do take care what you are doing, Gilberte!”
Then, in a
