his wares to you
like a hawker. And you think it insult, I will warrant!--insult for
a soldier who has nothing but his courage, and his endurance, and
his heroism under suffering to ennoble him, to dare to love Mme. la
Princesse Corona! I think otherwise. I think that Mme. la Princesse
Corona never had a love of so much honor, though she has had princes and
nobles and all the men of her rank, no doubt, at her feet, through that
beauty that is like a spell!"

Hurried headlong by her own vehemence, and her own hatred for her rival,
which drove her to magnify the worth of the passion of which she was so
jealous, that she might lessen, if she could, the pride of her on whom
it was lavished, she never paused to care what she said, or heed what
its consequences might become. She felt incensed, amazed, irritated,
to see no trace of any emotion come on her hearer's face; the hot,
impetuous, expansive, untrained nature underrated the power for
self-command of the Order she so blindly hated.

"You speak idly and at random, like the child you are," the grande dame
answered her with chill, contemptuous rebuke. "I do not imagine that the
person you allude to made you his confidante in such a matter?"

"He!" retorted Cigarette. "He belongs to your class, Milady. He is as
silent as the grave. You might kill him, and he would never show it
hurt. I only know what he muttered in his fever."

"When you attended him?"

"Not I!" cried Cigarette, who saw for the first time that she was
betraying herself. "He lay in the scullion's tent where I was; that was
all; and he was delirious with the shot-wounds. Men often are--"

"Wait! Hear me a little while, before you rush on in this headlong and
foolish speech," interrupted her auditor, who had in a moment's rapid
thought decided on her course with this strange, wayward nature. "You
err in the construction you have placed on the words, whatever they
were, which you heard. The gentleman--he is a gentleman--whom you speak
of bears me no love. We are almost strangers. But by a strange chain
of circumstances he is connected with my family; he once had great
friendship with my brother; for reasons that I do not know, but which
are imperative with him, he desires to keep his identity unsuspected by
everyone; an accident alone revealed it to me, and I have promised him
not to divulge it. You understand?"

Cigarette gave an affirmative gesture. Her eyes were fastened suddenly,
yet with a deep, b