“But hark! how the cannon are roaring,” Gilberte presently exclaimed.  “I must make haste and dress.”

The reports sounded more distinctly in the silent room now that their conversation had ceased.  Leaving her bed, the young woman accepted the assistance of her friend, not caring to summon 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 knows that we have abundance of space in the factory, and I have already authorized the gentlemen to make use of the courtyard and the big drying-room.  But you should go down in person—­”