She well knew that the French girl would not accept the present unless it were given to her in a very tactful way, and just to find it in the linen press with her name on it and the donor out of reach seemed to Judy the most diplomatic method.
Madame le Marquise d’Ochtè must be looked up again. Not only were Kent and Judy very fond of her, but they knew they could not show their faces to Mrs. Brown unless they had seen her dear Sally Bolling. This time they found her in the old home in the Faubourg. She had been to the front and come back to get her house in readiness for the wounded.
Could this be the gay and volatile Marquise, this sad looking, middle-aged woman? She had grown almost thin during those few months of the war. Her beautiful Titian hair was now streaked with grey. Judy remembered with a choking feeling the first time she had come to the Ochtè home on that night soon after Molly and her mother had arrived in Paris, when they had dined in the Faubourg and then gone to hear Louise at the Opera. The Marquise had been radiant in black velvet and diamonds, a beautiful, gay woman that one could hardly believe to be the mother of Philippe. She had looked so young, so sparkling. She had said at one time that she allowed no grey hairs to stay in her head, but had her maid pull them out no matter how it hurt. Now it would take all a maid’s time to keep down the grey hairs in that head, and would leave but a scant supply for a coiffure could they be extracted.
Kent thought she looked more like his mother and loved her for it. Her greeting was very warm and her interest great in what Judy and Kent had been doing and what they meant to do. She received them in the great salon that had been converted into a hospital ward. All of the Louis Quinze furniture had been stored away in an upper chamber and now in its place were long rows of cots. The floor was bare of the handsome rugs which had been the delight and envy of Judy on former visits, and now the parquetted boards were frotted to a point of cleanliness that no germ would have dared to violate.
“I left the pictures for the poor fellows to look at—that is, those who are spared their eyesight,” she said sadly. “My hospital opens to-morrow, but I want the privilege of giving a wedding breakfast to you young people. I can well manage it in the small salle à manger. That is left as it was.”
“Oh, you are so kind, but dear old Mère Tricot is making a great cake for us and she would be sad indeed if she could not give the breakfast,” explained Judy.
“That is as it should be,” said the Marquise kindly, “but am I invited?”
“Invited! Of course you are invited, and the Marquis and Philippe if they can be got hold of.”
“They are still in camp and have not gone to the fore, so I will manage to reach them. Jean is very busy, drilling all the time, but a family wedding must be attended. Philippe is learning to fly,” and she closed her eyes a moment as though to shut out the remembrance of accidents that happen all the time to the daring aviators.
Judy wondered if he had come in contact with Josephine Perkins, but said nothing as it was a deep secret that Jo was passing off as a man and a word might give her away.