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Page 21
"She sustained her injuries during the war, I understand?"
"Yes. Poor Madame. The hospital of which she was in charge was bombed
and the shock left her as you see her. I was there, too, but I luckily
escaped without injury."
"What, you were there?"
"Yes. That was where I first met Madame de St�mer. She used to be very
wealthy, you see, and she established this hospital in France at her
own expense, and I was one of her assistants for a time. She lost both
her husband and her fortune in the war, and as if that were not bad
enough, lost the use of her limbs, too."
"Poor woman," I said. "I had no idea her life had been so tragic. She
has wonderful courage."
"Courage!" exclaimed the girl, "if you knew all that I know about her."
Her face grew sweetly animated as she bent toward me excitedly and
confidentially.
"Really, she is simply wonderful. I learned to respect her in those
days as I have never respected any other woman in the world; and when,
after all her splendid work, she, so vital and active, was stricken
down like that, I felt that I simply could not leave her, especially as
she asked me to stay."
"So you went with her to Nice?"
"Yes. Then the Colonel took this house, and we came here, but--"
She hesitated, and glanced at me curiously.
"Perhaps you are not quite happy?"
"No," she said, "I am not. You see it was different in France. I knew
so many people. But here at Cray's Folly it is so lonely, and Madame
is--"
Again she hesitated.
"Yes?"
"Well," she laughed in an embarrassed fashion, "I am afraid of her at
times."
"In what way?"
"Oh, in a silly, womanish sort of way. Of course she is a wonderful
manager; she rules the house with a rod of iron. But really I haven't
anything to do here, and I feel frightfully out of place sometimes.
Then the Colonel--Oh, but what am I talking about?"
"Won't you tell me what it is that the Colonel fears?"
"You know that he fears something, then?"
"Of course. That is why Paul Harley is here."
A change came over the girl's face; a look almost of dread.
"I wish I knew what it all meant."
"You are aware, then, that there is something wrong?"
"Naturally I am. Sometimes I have been so frightened that I have made
up my mind to leave the very next day."
"You mean that you have been frightened at night?" I asked with
curiosity.
"Dreadfully frightened."
"Won't you tell me in what way?"
She looked up at me swiftly, then turned her head aside, and bit her
lip.
"No, not now," she replied. "I can't very well."
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