rought a strange, unfamiliar feeling of weakness
before a hopeless and cruel doom that was no more to be altered by her
will than the huge, bare rocks of Africa, out yonder in the glare of
noon, were to be lifted by her hand. For she knew that this man, who
made so light of perils that would have chilled many to the soul in
terror, and who bore so quiet and serene a habit beneath the sharpest
stings and hardest blows of his adversities, would not speak thus
without full warrant; would not consign himself to this renunciation of
every hope, unless he were compelled to it by a destiny from which there
was no escape.

She was silent some moments, her eyes resting on him with that grave and
luminous regard which no man had ever changed to one more tender or
less calmly contemplative. He had risen again, and paced to and fro the
narrow chamber; his head bent down, his chest rising and falling with
the labored, quickened breath. He had thought that the hour in which
his brother's ingratitude had pierced his heart had been the greatest
suffering he had ever known, or ever could know; but a greater had
waited on him here, in the fate to which the jeweled toy that he had
lifted from the water had accidentally led him, not dreaming to what he
came.

"Lord Royallieu," she said softly, at length, while she rose and moved
toward him, the scarlet of the trailing cashmeres gathering dark, ruby
lights in them as they caught sun and shadow; and at the old name,
uttered in her voice, he started, and turned, and looked at her as
though he saw some ghost of his past life rise from its grave. "Why look
at me so?" she pursued ere he could speak. "Act how you will, you cannot
change the fact that you are the bearer of your father's title. So long
as you live, your brother Berkeley can never take it legally. You may
be a Chasseur of the African Army, but none the less are you a Peer of
England."

"What means that?" he muttered. "Why tell me that? I have said I am
dead. Leave me buried here, and let him enjoy what he may--what he can."

"But this is folly--madness----"

"No; it is neither. I have told you I should stand as a felon in the
eyes of the English law; I should have no civil rights; the greatest
mercy fate can show me is to let me remain forgotten here. It will not
be long, most likely, before I am thrust into the African sand, to rot
like that brave soul out yonder. Berkeley will be the lawful holder of
the title then; leave hi