mon her maid, and rapidly
made her toilet for the day, in order that she might be ready to
go downstairs should she be needed there. As she was completing the
arrangement of her hair there was a knock at the door, and, recognizing
the voice of the elder Madame Delaherche, she hastened to admit her.

"Certainly, dear mother, you may come in."

With the thoughtlessness that was part of her nature, she allowed the
old lady to enter without having first removed the gauntlets from the
table. It was in vain that Henriette darted forward to seize them and
throw them behind a chair. Madame Delaherche stood glaring for some
seconds at the spot where they had been with an expression on her
face as if she were slowly suffocating. Then her glance wandered
involuntarily from object to object in the room, stopping finally at the
great red-curtained bed, the coverings thrown back in disorder.

"I see that Madame Weiss has disturbed your slumbers. Then you were able
to sleep, daughter?"

It was plain that she had had another purpose in coming there than
to make that speech. Ah, that marriage that her son had insisted on
contracting, contrary to her wish, at the mature age of fifty, after
twenty years of joyless married life with a shrewish, bony wife; he, who
had always until then deferred so to her will, now swayed only by his
passion for this gay young widow, lighter than thistle-down! She had
promised herself to keep watch over the present, and there was the
past coming back to plague her. But ought she to speak? Her life in
the household was one of silent reproach and protest; she kept herself
almost constantly imprisoned in her chamber, devoting herself rigidly to
the observances of her austere religion. Now, however, the wrong was so
flagrant that she resolved to speak to her son.

Gilberte blushingly replied, without an excessive manifestation of
embarrassment, however:

"Oh, yes, I had a few hours of refreshing sleep. You know that Jules has
not returned--"

Madame Delaherche interrupted her with a grave nod of her head. Ever
since the artillery had commenced to roar she had been watching eagerly
for her son's return, but she was a Spartan mother, and concealed her
gnawing anxiety under a cloak of brave silence. And then she remembered
what was the object of her visit there.

"Your uncle, the colonel, has sent the regimental surgeon with a note
in pencil, to ask if we will allow them to establish a hospital here. He
k