'It was very wrong of you,' said Henriette, at last, with a grave look.
She might have said more, but Gilberte with one of her pretty caressing gestures closed her mouth. And there they remained, neither speaking any further, but linked in an affectionate embrace albeit so dissimilar from one another. They could hear the beating of each other's hearts, and might have realised how different was their language—the one the heart of a woman who gave herself up to mirth, who wasted and frittered away her life; the other a heart that was bound up in one unique devotion, full of the great, mute heroism of a strong and lofty soul.
'It's true; they are fighting,' Gilberte at last exclaimed. 'I must make haste and dress.'
The detonations seemed to have been growing louder since silence had reigned in the room. Gilberte sprang out of bed, and, unwilling to summon her maid, asked Henriette to help her. She put on a dress and a pair of boots, so that she might be ready either to receive or to go out, and she was hastily dressing her hair—indeed, had almost finished doing so—when there came a knock at the door, and, on recognising the voice of old Madame Delaherche, she ran to open it. 'Certainly, mother dear, you can come in,' she said, and with her usual thoughtlessness she ushered her mother-in-law into the room, forgetting that the gloves were still lying on the side-table.
In vain did Henriette dart forward to take and throw them behind an arm-chair. They must have been seen by the old lady, for she stopped short as if she were stifling, as though unable to catch her breath. But at last, after glancing around the room, she said: 'So Madame Weiss came up to wake you. Were you able to sleep, then?'
She had evidently not come for the mere purpose of talking in that strain. Ah! that unfortunate second marriage which her son had insisted upon, despite all her remonstrances, which he had contracted after twenty years of frigid matrimony with a skinny, sulky wife! During all that time he had been so sensible and reasonable, and then, all at once, at fifty years of age, he had been carried away by quite a youthful desire for that pretty widow, so frivolous and gay. She, the mother, had vowed that she would watch over the present, and now here was the past coming back again! But ought she to speak out? Her presence in the house nowadays was like a silent blame, and she almost always remained in her own room occupied with her devotions. This time, however, the wrong was so serious that she resolved to warn her son.
'You know that Jules has not come back?' said Gilberte.
The old lady nodded. Since the beginning of the cannonade she had felt anxious, and had been watching for her son's return. She was, however, a brave mother. And now she remembered for what reason she had come upstairs. 'Your uncle, the colonel,' she said to her daughter-in-law, 'has sent us Major Bouroche with a note in pencil, asking if we will allow an ambulance to be installed here. He knows that we have plenty of room in the factory, and I have already placed the drying room and the courtyard at the gentlemen's disposal. Only, you ought to come down.'
'Oh! at once, at once!' said Henriette, stepping forward, 'we will help.'
Gilberte herself gave signs of emotion, and became quite enraptured with the idea of playing the nurse, which to her was a novel part. She barely took time to fasten a strip of lace over her hair, and the three women thereupon went down.