“That is not German. It is a Latin tongue,” thought the girl, wonderingly. “Italian or Spanish, perhaps. Who can it be?”
She started forward again, yet walked softly, for the moss and short grass beside the road made her footfalls indistinguishable a few yards away. There loomed up ahead of her a wayside cross—one of those weather-worn and ancient monuments so often seen in that country.
In walking with Henriette Dupay, Ruth had seen the French girl kneel a moment at this junction of the two lanes, and whisper a prayer. Indeed, the American girl had followed her example, for she believed that God hears the reverent prayer wherever it is made. And Ruth had felt of late that she had much to pray for.
The voices of the two wrangling people suggested no worship, however. Nor were they kneeling at the wayside shrine. She saw them, at last, standing in the middle of the cross lane. One, she knew, had come down from the chateau.
Ruth saw that the woman was the heavy-faced creature whom she had once seen at the gateway of the chateau when riding past with Charlie Bragg. This strange-looking old woman Charlie had said was a servant of the countess up at the chateau and that she was not a Frenchwoman. Indeed, the countess herself was not really French, but was Alsatian, and “the wrong kind,” to use the chauffeur’s expression.
The American girl caught a glimpse of the woman’s face and then hid her own with her veil. But the man’s countenance she did not behold until she had passed the shrine and had looked back.
He had wheeled to look after Ruth. He was a small man and suddenly she saw, as he stepped out to trace her departure more clearly, that he was lame. He wore a heavy shoe on one foot with a thick and clumsy sole-such as the supposed Italian chef had worn coming over from America on the Red Cross ship.
Was it the man, José, suspected with Legrand and Mrs. Rose Mantel—all members of a band of conspirators pledged to rob the Red Cross? Ruth dared not halt for another glance at him. She pulled the veil further over her face and scuttled on up the lane toward the Dupay farmhouse.
CHAPTER XX—MANY THINGS HAPPEN
Ruth reached the farmhouse just as the family was sitting down to breakfast. The house and outbuildings of the Dupays were all connected, as is the way in this part of France. No shell had fallen near the buildings, which was very fortunate, indeed.