"Helen," he said, "Jack and I will stay, but you must go with the children. There is no danger--there can be no invasion, for our troops will be passing here by night; I only wish to be sure that--that in case--in case things should go dreadfully wrong, you would not be compelled to witness anything unpleasant."
Madame de Morteyn shook her head gently.
"Why speak of it?" she said; "you know I will not go."
"I'll stay, too," said Sir Thorald, eagerly; "Cecil and Molly can take the children to Paris; Madame de Morteyn, you really should go also."
She leaned back and shook her head decisively.
"Then you will both come, you and Madame de Morteyn?" urged Lady Hesketh of the vicomte.
The old man hesitated. His wife smiled. She knew he could not leave in the face of the enemy; she had been the wife of this old African campaigner for thirty years, and she knew what she knew.
"Helen--" he began.
"Yes, dear, we will both stay; the city is too hot in July," she said; "Sir Thorald, some coffee? No more? Betty, you want another muffin?--they are there by Cecil. Children, I think I hear the carriages coming; you must not make Lady Hesketh wait."
"I have half a mind to stay," said Molly Hesketh. Sir Thorald said she might if she wanted to enlist, and they all tried to smile, but the sickly gray of early morning, sombre, threatening, fell on faces haggard with foreboding--young faces, too, lighted by the pale flames of the candles.
Alixe von Elster and Barbara Lisle went first; there were tears and embraces, and au revoirs and aufwiedersehens.
Little Alixe blanched and trembled when Sir Thorald bent over her, not entirely unconscious of the havoc his drooping mustache and cynical eyes had made in her credulous German bosom. Molly Hesketh kissed her, wishing that she could pinch her; and so they left, tearful, anxious, to be driven to Courtenay, and whirled from there across the Rhine to Cologne.
Sir Thorald and Lady Hesketh lingered on the terrace after the others had returned to the breakfast-room.
"Thorald," she said, "you are a brute!"
"Eh?" cried Sir Thorald.
"You're a brute!"
"Molly, what the deuce is the matter?"
"Nothing--if you ever see her again, I'll tell Ricky."
"I might say the same thing in regard to Ricky, my dear," said Sir Thorald, mildly.
"It is not true," she said; "I did no damage to him; and you know--you know down in the depths of your fickle soul that--that--"
"What, my dear?"
"Never mind!" said Molly, sharply; but she crimsoned when he kissed her, and held tightly to his sleeve.