but for the
indignity, the subordination, the license, the brutality, the tyranny.
He is as if he were chained to the galleys. He never says anything.
Oh, no! he is of your kind you know! But he suffers. Mort de Dieu! he
suffers. Now, if you be his friend, can you do nothing for him? Can you
ransom him in no way? Can you go away out of Africa and leave him in
this living death to get killed and thrust into the sand, like his
comrade the other day?"

Her hearer did not answer; the words made her heart ache; they cut her
to the soul. It was not for the first time that the awful desolation of
his future had been present before her; but it was the first time that
the fate to which she would pass away and leave him had been so directly
in words before her. Cigarette, obeying the generous impulses of her
better nature, and abandoning self with the same reckless impetuosity
with which a moment before she would, if she could, have sacrificed her
rival, saw the advantage gained, and pursued it with rapid skill. She
was pleading against herself; no matter. In that instant she was capable
of crucifying herself, and only remembering mercy to the absent.

"I have heard," she went on vehemently, for the utterance to which she
forced herself was very cruel to her, "that you of the Noblesse are
stanch as steel to your own people. It is the best virtue that you
have. Well, he is of your people. Will you go away in your negligent
indifference, and leave him to eat his heart out in bitterness and
misery? He was your brother's friend; he was known to you in his early
time; you said so. And are you cold enough and cruel enough, Milady,
not to make one effort to redeem him out of bondage?--to go back to your
palaces, and your pleasures, and your luxuries, and your flatteries, and
be happy, while this man is left on bearing his yoke here?--and it is
a yoke that galls, that kills!--bearing it until, in some day of
desperation, a naked blade cuts its way to his heart, and makes its
pulse cease forever? If you do, you patricians are worse still than I
thought you!"

Venetia heard her without interruption; a great sadness came over her
face as the vivid phrases followed each other. She was too absorbed in
the subject of them to heed the challenge and the insolence of their
manner. She knew that the Little One who spoke them loved him, though
so tenacious to conceal her love; and she was touched, not less by the
magnanimity which, for his sake,