She forced a smile with her curtsey and backed toward the door. P. C. Breagh explained in his French that he was no robber but a harmless traveler, and that she need not be alarmed.
"Monsieur is very kind!" Her chopper-hand hidden under her apron, she explained that she had served as cook in the establishment. Upon the news that M. de Bismarck was coming, tout à coup, Monsieur and Madame had gone away together to Paris. They were noble and very amiable, but old, old, and feeble.... They had left the little château in her care....
"Mademoiselle is not easily frightened?" P. C. Breagh hinted.
Said the black-eyed, modestly:
"I am Angéle—nothing of Mademoiselle. A peasant—like my father, who was gardener for Monsieur and Madame.... I was alone here when the Prussian horsemen came, breaking the doors and shutters.... Everything was spoiled, or taken, wine, linen, the fowls in the poultry-run. Destitution, ruin everywhere!..."
She accentuated her tale of loss by heavings of the bosom, shrugs of the fine shoulders, dramatic gestures.
"Then my father returned and found ... No matter! Both he and I should have been silent and endured everything.... It was not wise, Monsieur, that the old man should have struck a Prussian, even for my sake. For then he was beaten. Whenever I shut my eyes, I see it.... Therefore I have vowed not to sleep again until...." She opened her eyes wide, and smiled, rather grimly, then changed the subject with a wave of the unchoppered and visible hand. Was Monsieur hungry? By searching, a crust of bread might be found in some cupboard, an egg or two—laid by one of the abducted hens in some private corner—a pinch of coffee and sugar sufficient for Monsieur!
"I should be glad of it. But—when you are in such trouble it seems unfair," protested Monsieur. He added, reverting to the language of the country, that he would be happy to pay for the déjeuner.
"But no! A meal for a bird!—Monsieur and Madame will never miss it!" and Angéle curtseyed herself away, with forced smiles.
Left alone, P. C. Breagh bolted the door and finding water in the bedroom jugs, and scented soap upon the washstand, enjoyed the luxury of a comprehensive wash, drying himself, in the absence of towels, upon a pillow-case. A pot of cold-cream, tinted a delicate pink and bearing the label of Piesse and Lubin, he found, and anointed his blistered feet therewith, and not without pangs of conscience—tore up the pillow-case and bandaged them. He would pay the girl for the damage done to her master's property, he told himself.