“Yes. I see you have bright eyes—you are observant,” said the countess. “Yes. Mexico was Bessie’s birthplace, although she is not all Spanish.”
Ruth thought to herself: “I could guarantee that. She is part German. ‘Elizabeth’—yes, indeed! And does this lady never suspect what her serving woman may be?”
The countess dismissed them with another kindly word and gesture. Henriette was very much wrought up over the incident.
“She is a great lady,” she whispered to Ruth. “Wait till I tell my father and mother how she spoke to me. They will be delighted.”
“And this is a republic!” smiled Ruth. Even mild toadyism did not much please this American girl. “Still,” she thought, “we are inclined to bow down and worship a less worthy aristocracy at home—the aristocracy of wealth.”
Henriette ran her down to the town and to the hospital gate. Ruth was more than tired—she felt exhausted when she got out of the car. But she saw the matron before retiring to her own cell for a few hours’ sleep.
“We shall need you, Mademoiselle,” the Frenchwoman said distractedly. “Oh! so many poor men are here. They have been bringing them in all day. There is a lull on the front, or I do not know what we should do. The poor, poor men!”
Ruth had to rest for a while, however, although she did not sleep. Her mind was too painfully active.
Her thoughts drummed continually upon two subjects, the mystery regarding Tom Cameron—his letter to her found in another man’s pocket. Secondly, the complications of the plot in which the woman in black, the two crooks from America, and the occupants of the chateau seemed all entangled.
She hoped hourly to hear from Tom; but no word came. She wished, indeed, that she might even see Charlie Bragg again; but nobody seemed to have seen him about the hospital of late. The ambulance corps was shifted around so frequently that there was no knowing where he could be found, save at his headquarters up near the front. And Ruth Fielding felt that she was quite as near the front here at Clair as she ever wished to be!