'Hush, hush, child!' she murmured, her eyes wet with tears. 'Poor child, poor child! Is it so very bad?'
But Marie could only sob.
They went into the house in a moment after that, those three, with the waiting-women. And then a change came over the Countess. Fraulein Max blinked to see it. My lady who, outside, had been so tender, began, before her riding cloak was off, to walk up and down like a caged wolf, with hard eyes and cheeks burning with indignation. Fraulein Max spoke to her timidly--said that the meal was ready, that my lady's woman was waiting, that my lady must be tired. But the Countess put her by almost with an oath. For hours she had been playing a part, a thing her proud soul loathed. For hours she had hidden, not her sorrow only and her anger, but her anxieties, her fears, her terrors. Now she must be herself or die.
Besides, the thing pressed! She had her woman's wits, and might stave off the general's offer for a few days, for a week. But a week--what was that? No wonder that she looked on the four helpless women round her, and realised that these were her only helpers now, her only protection; no wonder that she cried out.
'I have been a fool!' she said, looking at them with burning eyes. 'A fool! When Martin warned me, I would not listen; when the Waldgrave hinted, I laughed at him. I was bewitched, like a silly fool in her teens! Don't contradict me!' And she stamped her foot impatiently. Fraulein Max had raised her hand.
'I don't,' the Fraulein answered. 'I don't understand you.'
'Do you understand that empty, chair?' my lady answered bitterly. 'Or that empty stool?'
Fraulein Anna blinked more and more. 'But war,' she said mildly--'a necessary evil, Voetius calls it--war, Countess----'
'Oh!' my lady cried in a fury. 'As carried on by these, it is a horror, a fiendish thing! I did not know before. Now I have seen it. Wait, wait, girl, until it takes those you love, and threatens your own safety, and then talk to me of war!'
But Fraulein Anna set her face mutinously. 'Still, I do not understand,' she said slowly, winking her short-sighted eyes like an owl in the daylight. 'You talk as if we had cause not only to grieve--as we have, indeed--but to fear. Are we not safe here? General Tzerclas----'