ia, with the calm decision
of one to whom any possibility of false interpretation of her motives
never occurred, and who was habituated to the free action that
accompanied an unassailable rank. "My brother must know what I know.
I shall be alone, and he can make his way hither, without doubt,
unobserved. Go and say this to him. You are his loyal little friend and
comrade."

"If I be, I do not see why I am to turn your lackey, Madame," said
Cigarette bitterly. "If you want him, you can send for him by other
messengers!"

Venetia Corona looked at her steadfastly, with a certain contempt in the
look.

"Then your pleading for him was all insincere? Let the matter drop,
and be good enough to leave my presence, which, you will remember, you
entered unsummoned and undesired."

The undeviating gentleness of the tone made the rebuke cut deeper, as
her first rebuke had cut, than any sterner censure or more peremptory
dismissal could have done. Cigarette stood irresolute, ashamed, filled
with rage, torn by contrition, impatient, wounded, swayed by jealous
rage and by the purer impulses she strove to stifle.

The Cross she had tossed down caught her sight as it glittered on the
carpet strewn over the hard earth; she stooped and raised it; the action
sufficed to turn the tide with her impressionable, ardent, capricious
nature; she would not disgrace that.

"I will go," she muttered in her throat; "and you--you--O God! no wonder
men love you when even I cannot hate you!"

Almost ere the words were uttered she had dashed aside the hangings
before the tent entrance, and had darted out into the night air. Venetia
Corona gazed after the swiftly flying figure as it passed over the
starlit ground, lost in amazement, in pity, and in regret; wondering
afresh if she had only dreamed of this strange interview in the Algerian
camp, which seemed to have come and gone with the blinding rapidity of
lightning.

"A little tigress!" she thought; "and yet with infinite nobility, with
wonderful germs of good in her. Of such a nature what a rare life might
have been made! As it is, her childhood we smile at and forgive; but,
great Heaven! what will be her maturity, her old age! Yet how she loves
him! And she is so brave she will not show it."

With the recollection came the remembrance of Cigarette's words as
to his own passion for herself, and she grew paler as it did so. "God
forbid he should have that pain, too!" she murmured. "What could