Then Eugenia heard a gentle tapping at her kitchen door. It was much the same noise that François had been accustomed to make on his daily visits with supplies from the chateau. For a moment Eugenia hoped that François might have come unexpectedly to their aid. But on opening the door, she found a wholly unexpected visitor.
A young girl of about sixteen stood outside. At first Eugenia did not recognize her. Then she saw that she wore a torn skirt and a little scarlet cap and that she was singularly pretty and graceful.
Like a flash a picture came before her; it was the figure of a little girl dancing before a group of French soldiers. What was the name Barbara had afterwards called her, the name of some character in an old French romance?
“Nicolete,” Eugenia said suddenly. And drawing the girl inside the little kitchen, she carefully closed the outside door.
CHAPTER XIX
Eugenia
This year in the southern portion of France it was March, not May, that came singing over the land. The days were soft and serene with the warmth and sunshine of late spring.
In front of the Chateau d’Amélie a peacock walked slowly across the lawn, spreading his tail and then arching his neck in an effort to behold his own grandeur. Near him two girls were walking up and down with a young man dressed in the uniform of a British officer. Not far away in a somewhat neglected garden a French peasant woman was laying a cloth on a wooden table and setting out cups and saucers of fine old china. It was self-evident that an afternoon meal of some kind was in preparation and that the two girls and young man were waiting for it to be made ready, and perhaps for other guests as well.
This was all taking place in the very neighborhood which a few months before had been overrun by the German troops after the retreat of the French army. But the French had returned unto their own again, at least in this particular vicinity where the Chateau d’Amélie had stood for several centuries. Six weeks after their retreat before the superior forces of the German enemy, the French had retaken their deserted trenches, after driving the enemy out of the neighborhood. More than this, they had afterwards forced the Germans to retire a quarter of a mile further back beyond the borders of Alsace-Lorraine.
Therefore happiness, or at least a degree of it, reigned once more in this portion of France, and in no place perhaps was there a fuller share than in the Chateau d’Amélie.