of him.  And all he will get from me will be permission to carry away my remembrance, with the consoling thought that he has done the proper thing and behaved himself like a gallant man who has long been an inhabitant of Paris.”  And with her air of triumphant gayety she added:  “But before he leaves he shall cause Uncle Fouchard to be set at liberty, and all his recompense for his trouble shall be a cup of tea sweetened by these fingers.”

But suddenly her fears returned to her:  she remembered what must be the terrible consequences of her indiscretion, and her eyes were again bedewed with tears.

“Mon Dieu! and Madame Delaherche—­how will it all end?  She bears me no love; she is capable of telling the whole story to my husband.”

Henriette had recovered her composure.  She dried her friend’s eyes, and made her rise from the lounge and arrange her disordered clothing.

“Listen, my dear; I cannot bring myself to scold you, and yet you know what my sentiments must be.  But I was so alarmed by the stories I heard about the Prussian, the business wore such an extremely ugly aspect, that this affair really comes to me as a sort of relief by comparison.  Cease weeping; things may come out all right.”

Her action was taken none too soon, for almost immediately Delaherche and his mother entered the room.  He said that he had made up his mind to take the train for Brussels that afternoon and had been giving orders to have a carriage ready to carry him across the frontier into Belgium; so he had come to say good-by to his wife.  Then turning and addressing Henriette: 

“You need have no further fears.  M. de Gartlauben, just is he was going away, promised me he would attend to your uncle’s case, and although I shall not be here, my wife will keep an eye to it.”

Since Madame Delaherche had made her appearance in the apartment Gilberte had not once taken her anxious eyes from off her face.  Would she speak, would she tell what she had seen, and keep her son from starting on his projected journey?  The elder lady, also, soon as she crossed the threshold, had bent her fixed gaze in silence on her daughter-in-law.  Doubtless her stern patriotism induced her to view the matter in somewhat the same light that Henriette had viewed it. Mon Dieu! since it was that young man, that Frenchman who had fought so bravely, was it not her duty to forgive, even as she had forgiven once before, in Captain Beaudoin’s case?  A look of greater softness rose to her eyes; she averted her head.  Her son might go; Edmond would be there to protect Gilberte against the Prussian.  She even smiled faintly, she whose grim face had never once relaxed since the news of the victory at Coulmiers.

“Au revoir,” she said, folding her son in her arms.  “Finish up your business quickly as you can and come back to us.”

And she took herself slowly away, returning to the prison-like chamber across the corridor, where the colonel, with his dull gaze, was peering into the shadows that lay outside the disk of bright light which fell from the lamp.