She did not answer, the momentary flash of interest had died out. With her sad eyes fixed upon the ebony and silver crucifix of her rosary, she was murmuring a prayer—doubtless for her father's soul. Seeing her thus absorbed, the soldier glanced at her companion, shrugged significantly, and tapped his own forehead, as though he would have said:
"It is well that women have faith in Heaven. See!—she turns to her beads, the poor little one. She is able to pray!—that is fortunate.... Otherwise, grief would turn her brain!"
Meeting no response from P. C. Breagh, who sat upon a backless straw-bottomed chair in the chimney corner, raptly contemplating the small, sorrowful face, the gunner shrugged again, and exchanged a wink of intelligence with Madame Guyot, as she took the bubbling pan from the fire, proclaiming the cutlet cooked to a turn.
Who has loved and does not remember the first meal partaken in the company of the beloved. To one guest at Madame Guyot's board, the fried cutlet and tomatoes eaten from her coarse platters of red-flowered crockery, the home-baked loaf, the jug of thin red wine, the country cheese and the dish of purple plums that served as dessert, made a banquet worthy of the gods. To sit opposite that little drawn, white face with the lowered, swollen eyelids, and watch her brave pretense of relishing their hostess' victuals, would have been torture had it not been bliss.
When the homespun cloth had been drawn, the crumbs shaken out upon the threshold for the hungry poultry, the cat accommodated with a saucer of scraps, and the hearth swept, P. C. Breagh, glancing at the cuckoo-clock that had hiccuped twelve, and now pointed to the half-hour, got up and reluctantly tore himself away.
"You are going?... Back to him?... To make sure that those soldiers have obeyed the orders of M. de Bismarck? Ah! that is what I have been praying for! Our Lady has put it into your head."
She said it eagerly, with her hand quieting the flutter in her bosom. Of what else should de Bayard's daughter have been thinking, P. C. Breagh asked himself. He entreated, his troubled gray eyes wistfully questioning:
"You won't leave this place until I come back? Pray do not!... Promise me!"
The soldier, chatting in low tones with the good woman of the cottage, pricked his hairy ears at the unfamiliar accent of the English words. Juliette answered in the same tongue:
"Monsieur, I give you my parole of honor. When you come back to this house, if I am alive, you will find me here, under the manteau of Our Lady. May she protect and guard you. Au revoir!..."