arp-pointed
leaves, and the close barriers of spines and launched herself with
inimitable dexterity on to the other side of the cacti. Cigarette had
too often played a game at spying and reconnoitering for her regiments,
and played it with a cleverness that distanced even the most ruse of the
Zephyrs, not to be able to do just whatever she chose, in taking the way
she liked, and lurking unseen at discretion.

She crossed the breadth of the grounds under the heavy shade of arbutus
trees with a hare's fleetness, and stood a second looking at the open
windows and the terraces that lay before them, brightly lighted by the
summer moon and by the lamps that sparkled among the shrubs. Then down
she dropped, as quickly, as lightly, as a young setter, down among the
ferns, into a shower of rhododendrons, whose rose and lilac blossoms
shut her wholly within them, like a fairy inclosed in bloom. The good
fairy of one life there she was assuredly, though she might be but
a devil-may-care, audacious, careless little feminine Belphegor and
military Asmodeus.

"Ah!" she said quickly and sharply, with a deep-drawn breath. The single
exclamation was at once a menace, a tenderness, a whirlwind of rage,
a volume of disdain, a world of pity. It was intensely French, and the
whole nature of Cigarette was in it.

Yet all she saw was a small and brilliant group sauntering to and fro
before the open windows, after dinner, listening to the bands, which,
through dinner, had played to them, and laughing low and softly; and, at
some distance from them, beneath the shade of a cedar, the figure of a
Corporal of Chasseurs,--calm, erect, motionless,--as though he were the
figure of a soldier cast in bronze. The scene was simple enough, though
very picturesque; but it told, by its vivid force of contrast, a whole
history to Cigarette.

"A true soldier!" she muttered, where she lay among the rhododendrons,
while her eyes grew very soft, as she gave the highest word of praise
that her whole range of language held. "A true soldier! How he keeps his
promise! But it must be bitter!"

She looked a while, very wistfully, at the Chasseur, where he stood
under the Lebanon boughs; then her glance swept bright as a hawk's over
the terrace, and lighted with a prescient hatred on the central form of
all--a woman's. There were two other great ladies there; but she passed
them, and darted with unerring instinct on that proud, fair, patrician
head, with its haug