"If we stay here together and don't trouble the war, probably the war will not trouble us," Madame Ribot continued. It was the maxim expressive of her temperament.
"Oh! I hadn't thought of it in that way!" Helen gasped.
"Besides, if you went to Paris and got into trouble I should have to come up and get you out." She was weary of having her daughter's arm around her neck and feeling that strange resentment against the world which she always suffered after looking long at Helen's features.
Helen drew away, her peculiar sensitiveness conscious of the old barrier.
Life for the next few days continued much as usual at the chateau, so far as Madame Ribot and Henriette were concerned. Henriette went on painting. But Helen could not draw. She wandered over the fields, her mind ever on the war. She was with the Belgians at Liége; with the French in Alsace. All three wondered, as the time approached, if the seventeenth cousin would come to Mervaux.
"Hardly," said Henriette.
"But I think he will," said Helen.
"Why should he? It's war time."
"Yes, why?" repeated Helen, with a searching look at Henriette, who lowered her eyes in a way that her sister well understood. Many young men had come to Mervaux for the same reason. Many had gone away trying to conceal their dejection. Henriette had enjoyed the visits, but not more than Madame Ribot who, looking on, lived over her own successes.
"Henriette does not know yet what it means to fall in love," thought her mother. "I hope that she will not for a few years more. A woman may do that only once. And Helen had not fallen in love, either. Poor Helen!" At intervals she could be sorry for herself by being sorry for Helen.