She left the room, and closed the door behind her. The door shut smartly. It sounded like a proclamation of her resolve. So—that was settled! In an instant her whole demeanour changed. A fire came back into her eyes, and she stepped with her old, soft-swaying lightness. In the room which she now entered sat her father and mother. The withered little reminiscence of Versailles watched at a window-side, her black eyes bright with interest, her thin lips slightly curved with an acerb and cynical compassion. But Giles de Lamourie sat with his back to the window, his face heavy and grey. “This is too awful!” he said, as Yvonne came up to him, and, bending over, kissed him on the forehead and the lips. “It is like a nightmare!” she answered. “But, would you believe it, papa, the very shock is doing me good? The suspense—_that_ kills! But I feel more like myself than I have for weeks. I must go out, breathe, and walk hard in the open.” De Lamourie’s face lightened. “Thou _art_ better, little one,” said he. “But why go alone at such a time? Where’s George?” But Yvonne was already at her mother’s side, kissing her, and did not answer her father’s question; which, indeed, needed no answer, as he had himself seen Anderson go into the inner room and not return. “But where will you go, child?” queried her mother. “There are no longer any left of your sick and your poor and your husbandless to visit.” “But I will be my own sick, little mamma,” she cried nervously, “and my own poor—and my own husbandless. I will visit myself. Don’t be troubled for me, dearies!” she added, in a tender voice. “I am so much better already.” The next moment she was gone. The door shut loudly after her. “Wilful!” said her mother. “Yes, more like she used to be. Much better!” exclaimed Giles de Lamourie, rising and looking out at the fires in a moment of brief absent-mindedness. “Yes, much better, George,” he added, as Anderson appeared from the inner room. But the Englishman’s face was full of discomfort. “I wish she would not go running out alone this way,” said he. “Curious that she should prefer to be alone, George,” said Madame de Lamourie, with deliberate malice. She was beginning to dislike this man who so palpably could not give her daughter happiness. * * * * * Yvonne, meanwhile, was speeding across the open fields, in the teeth of the wind. The ground was hard as iron, but there was little snow—only a dry, powdery covering deep enough to keep the stubble from hurting her feet. She ran straight for the tiny cabin of Mother Pêche, trusting to find her not yet gone. None of the houses at the eastern end of the village were as yet on fire. That of Mother Pêche stood a little apart, in a bushy pasture-lot. Yvonne found the low door swinging wide, the house deserted; but there were red embers still on the hearth, whereby she knew the old woman had not been long away.