When the three were together they were merry enough; indeed, the Englishman's mistakes in French were sufficient to cause laughter in themselves without that re-action which lightens the atmosphere of a sick-room when the danger is past. But while he was talking to the Mother Senneville downstairs, or waiting a summons to come up, the cure never heard laughter in the back bedroom. There seemed to be some shadow there which fled before his cheery smile when he went upstairs. When he and the girl were together when she walked on the sea-wall with him for a breath of air, she was grave enough too, as if now that she knew him better she no longer considered it necessary to assume a light-heartedness she did not feel.
“Are you sure there is nothing I can do to make your life easier here?” he asked suddenly one day.
“Quite sure,” she answered without conviction.
“Have you all that you want, mademoiselle?”
“Oh yes.”
But he felt that there was some anxiety weighing upon her. He was always at or near the Hotel de la Plage now, so that she could call him from the window or the door. One day—a day of cloud and drizzle, which are common enough at Yport in the early summer—he went into the little front room, which the Mother Senneville fondly called her salon, to read the daily office from the cloth-bound book he ever carried in his pocket. He was engaged in this devout work when the Englishwoman came hastily into the room, closing the door and standing with her back against it.
“There is a gendarme in the street,” she said, in little more than a whisper, her eyes glittering. She was breathless.
“What of it, mademoiselle? It is my old friend the Sergeant Grall. It is I who christen his children.”
“Why is he here?”
“It is his duty, mademoiselle. The village is peaceful enough now that the men are away at the fisheries. You have nothing to fear.”