."

"Perhaps it will be nice to feel wicked for once," Ruth said, feeling a
little choke in her throat.

She drew from concealment her own contribution to the "feast"--several
lumps of sugar.

"Do not fear," she added, smiling. "None of the poor poilus are
deprived. This is from my own private store. I wish there was more of
it, but I can't resist giving a lump now and then to the village
children. They are so hungry for it. They call me 'Mam'zelle Sucre'."

"And I would bring you cream often, Madame," Henriette hastened to add,
"but our good old Lally died, you know, and the little cow does not
give much milk as yet, and it is not as rich. Oh! if that werwolf had
not appeared to us! You remember, Mademoiselle Ruth? Then old Lally
died at once," and the French girl nodded her head vigorously, being
fully convinced of the truth of the old superstition.

The countess flushed and then paled, but nobody but Ruth noticed this.
The American girl watched her hostess covertly. The bare mention of a
superstition that had the whole countryside by the throat, disturbed
much the countess' self-control.

The next moment there was a step in the hall and then the door opened
to admit the same young officer Ruth Fielding had met in the
lane--Major Henri Marchand.

"Pardon, Maman," he said, bowing, and speaking to his mother quite like
a little boy. "Do I offend?"

"Do come in and have a cup of tea, Henri. There is sugar and real
cream--thanks to our two young friends here. You remember our petite
Hetty, of course? And this is our very brave Mademoiselle Ruth
Fielding, of the American Red Cross. My younger son, Monsieur Henri,"
the countess said easily.

Major Marchand advanced into the room promptly. To Henriette he bowed
with a smile. Ruth put out her hand impulsively, and he bowed low
above it and touched his lips to her fingers.

The girl started a little and glowed. The manner of his address rather
shocked her, for she was unused to the European form of greeting.
Henri's deep, purple eyes looked long into her own brown ones as he
lingeringly released her hand.

"Mademoiselle!" he murmured. "I am charmed."

Ruth did not know whether she was altogether charmed or not! She felt
that there was something rather overpowering in such a greeting, and
she rather doubted the sincerity of it.

She could understand, however, little Henriette's sentimental worship
of the young major. Henri Marchand was the t