A few feet in front of the steps a fountain, fed from the great
ponds at the other side of the chateau, was making a constant tinkle and
splashing in a wide marble basin, and the jet of water glimmered like a
shower of diamonds in the broken moonlight. The very neglect and
half-ruinous state of all this made it only the prettier, as well as
sadder. I was too intently watching for the arrival of the lady, in the
direction of the chateau, to study these things; but the half-noted
effect of them was romantic, and suggested somehow the grotto and the
fountain, and the apparition of Egeria.
As I watched a voice spoke to me, a little behind my left shoulder. I
turned, almost with a start, and the masque, in the costume of
Mademoiselle de la Valliere, stood there.
"The Countess will be here presently," she said. The lady stood upon the
open space, and the moonlight fell unbroken upon her. Nothing could be
more becoming; her figure looked more graceful and elegant than ever.
"In the meantime I shall tell you some peculiarities of her situation.
She is unhappy; miserable in an ill--assorted marriage, with a jealous
tyrant who now would constrain her to sell her diamonds, which are--"
"Worth thirty thousand pounds sterling. I heard all that from a friend.
Can I aid the Countess in her unequal struggle? Say but how the greater
the danger or the sacrifice, the happier will it make me.
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