The baron shook his head and gulped down his food.
“No news?” inquired Mademoiselle Brun.
“None.”
They continued to eat for some minutes in silence.
“Was he at Sedan?” asked mademoiselle, at length.
“Yes,” replied the baron, gravely. And then they continued their meal in silence by the light of the flickering candle.
“Have you any one looking for him?” asked mademoiselle, as she rose from the table and began to clear it.
“I have sent two of my men to do so,” replied the baron, who was by nature no more expansive than his old governess. And for some days there was no mention of de Vasselot between them.
Mademoiselle found plenty of work to do besides the menial labours of which she had relieved the man who deemed himself fit for nothing more complicated than washing dishes and providing funds. She wrote letters for the wounded, and also for the dead. She had a way of looking at those who groaned unnecessarily and out of idle self-pity, which was conducive to silence, and therefore to the comfort of others. She smoothed no pillows and proffered no soft words of sympathy. But it was she who found out that the curé had a piano. She it was who took two hospital attendants to the priest's humble house and brought the instrument away. She had it placed inside the altar rails, and fought the curé afterwards in the vestry as to the heinousness of the proceeding.
“You will not play secular airs?” pleaded the old man.