Dolge appeared, with his toothless grin, at the round opening in the postern.
"The little Hetty and Mademoiselle l'Americaine," he mumbled. "Madame la Countess expects you."
He unchained the door and let them pass through. Then he shut and chained the door again just as though the chateau was besieged.
The girls did not wait for him. They walked up the curved avenue to the wide entrance to the great pile of masonry. The chateau was as large as a good-sized hotel.
Before the war there had been many comforts, Ruth understood, that now the countess was doing without. For instance, electric lights and some kind of expensive heating arrangement.
Now the lady of the chateau burned oil, or candles, like the peasants, and the chateau doors were wide open that the sun and air of this grateful day might help dry the tomb-like atmosphere of the reception hall.
"Ma foi!" said Henriette, commenting on this in a low voice, "even the beautiful old armor—the suits of mail that the ancient Marchands wore in the times of the Crusades—is rusty. See you! madame has not servants enough now to begin to care for the place."
"I suppose she has stored away the rugs and the books from the library shelves," began Ruth; but Henriette quickly said:
"Non! non! You do not understand, Mademoiselle, what our good lady has done. The wonderful rugs she has sold—that off the library floor, which, they say, the old count himself brought from Bagdad. And the books—all her library—have gone to the convalescent hospitals, or to the poilus in the trenches. For they, poor men, need the distraction of reading."
"And some of your neighbors suspect her," repeated Ruth thoughtfully.