n nothing's touched--nothing? I don't understand," he stammered.

Monsieur de Rechamp raised himself majestically from his chair,
crossed the room and lifted Yvonne Malo's hand to his lips. "Nothing is
touched--thanks to this hand and this brain."

Madame de Rechamp was shining on her son through tears. "Ah, yes--we owe
it all to Yvonne."

"All, all! Grandmamma will tell you!" Simone chimed in; and Yvonne,
brushing aside their praise with a half-impatient laugh, said to her
betrothed: "But your grandmother! You must go up to her at once."

A wonderful specimen, that grandmother: I was taken to see her after
dinner. She sat by the fire in a bare panelled bedroom, bolt upright
in an armchair with ears, a knitting-table at her elbow with a shaded
candle on it.

She was even more withered and ancient than she looked in her
photograph, and I judge she'd never been pretty; but she somehow made
me feel as if I'd got through with prettiness. I don't know exactly what
she reminded me of: a dried bouquet, or something rich and clovy that
had turned brittle through long keeping in a sandal-wood box. I suppose
her sandal-wood box had been Good Society. Well, I had a rare evening
with her. Jean and his parents were called down to see the cure, who had
hurried over to the chateau when he heard of the young man's arrival;
and the old lady asked me to stay on and chat with her. She related
their experiences with uncanny detachment, seeming chiefly to resent
the indignity of having been made to descend into the cellar--"to avoid
French shells, if you'll believe it: the Germans had the decency not to
bombard us," she observed impartially. I was so struck by the absence
of rancour in her tone that finally, out of sheer curiosity, I made
an allusion to the horror of having the enemy under one's roof. "Oh,
I might almost say I didn't see them," she returned. "I never go
downstairs any longer; and they didn't do me the honour of coming beyond
my door. A glance sufficed them--an old woman like me!" she added with a
phosphorescent gleam of coquetry.

"But they searched the chateau, surely?" "Oh, a mere form; they were
very decent--very decent," she almost snapped at me. "There was a first
moment, of course, when we feared it might be hard to get Monsieur de
Rechamp away with my young grandson; but Mlle. Malo managed that very
cleverly. They slipped off while the officers were dining." She looked
at me with the smile of some arch old lady