And she passed on toward the colonel’s room, leaving Henriette distressed to have unwittingly involved herself in a family drama.  Within the last twenty-four hours Madame Delaherche had made up her mind to lay the whole matter before her son before his departure for Belgium, whither he was going to negotiate a large purchase of coal to enable him to put some of his idle looms in motion.  She could not endure the thought that the abominable thing should be repeated beneath her eyes while he was absent, and was only waiting to make sure he would not defer his departure until some other day, as he had been doing all the past week.  It was a terrible thing to contemplate:  the wreck of her son’s happiness, the Prussian disgraced and driven from their doors, the wife, too, thrust forth upon the street and her name ignominiously placarded on the walls, as had been threatened would be done with any woman who should dishonor herself with a German.

Gilberte gave a little scream of delight on beholding Henriette.

“Ah, how glad I am to see you!  It seems an age since we met, and one grows old so fast in the midst of all these horrors!” Thus running on she dragged her friend to her bedroom, where she seated her on the lounge and snuggled down close beside her.  “Come, take off your things; you must stay and breakfast with us.  But first we’ll talk a bit; you must have such lots and lots of things to tell me!  I know that you are without news of your brother.  Ah, that poor Maurice, how I pity him, shut up in Paris, with no gas, no wood, no bread, perhaps!  And that young man whom you have been nursing, that friend of your brother’s—­oh! a little bird has told me all about it—­isn’t it for his sake you are here to-day?”

Henriette’s conscience smote her, and she did not answer.  Was it not really for Jean’s sake that she had come, in order that, the old uncle being released, the invalid, who had grown so dear to her, might have no further cause for alarm?  It distressed her to hear his name mentioned by Gilberte; she could not endure the thought of enlisting in his favor an influence that was of so ambiguous a character.  Her inbred scruples of a pure, honest woman made themselves felt, now it seemed to her that the rumors of a liaison with the Prussian captain had some foundation.

“Then I’m to understand that it’s in behalf of this young man that you come to us for assistance?” Gilberte insistently went on, as if enjoying her friend’s discomfiture.  And as the latter, cornered and unable to maintain silence longer, finally spoke of Father Fouchard’s arrest:  “Why, to be sure!  What a silly thing I am—­and I was talking of it only this morning!  You did well in coming to us, my dear; we must go about your uncle’s affair at once and see what we can do for him, for the last news I had was not reassuring.  They are on the lookout for someone of whom to make an example.”

“Yes, I have had you in mind all along,” Henriette hesitatingly replied.  “I thought you might be willing to assist me with your advice, perhaps with something more substantial—­”