know as well how to produce a
dramatic effect in your presence as they do how to drink and to swear
when they are out of it."

"Very possibly," she said, with an indolent indifference; "but that man
was no actor, and I never saw a gentleman if he have not been one."

"Like enough," answered the Marquis. "I believe many 'gentlemen' come
into our ranks who have fled their native countries and broken all laws
from the Decalogue to the Code Napoleon. So long as they fight well,
we don't ask their past criminalities. We cannot afford to throw away a
good soldier because he has made his own land too hot to hold him."

"Of what country is your Corporal, then?"

"I have not an idea. I imagine his past must have been something very
black, indeed, for the slightest trace of it has never, that I know
of, been allowed to let slip from him. He encourages the men in every
insubordination, buys their favor with every sort of stage trick, thinks
himself the finest gentleman in the whole brigades of Africa, and ought
to have been shot long ago, if he had had his real deserts."

She let her glance dwell on him with a contemplation that was half
contemptuous amusement, half unexpressed dissent.

"I wonder he has not been, since you have the ruling of his fate," she
said, with a slight smile lingering about the proud, rich softness of
her lips.

"So do I."

There was a gaunt, grim, stern significance in the three monosyllables
that escaped him unconsciously; it made her turn and look at him more
closely.

"How has he offended you?" she asked.

Chateauroy laughed off her question.

"In a thousand ways, madame. Chiefly because I received my regimental
training under one who followed the traditions of the Armies of Egypt
and the Rhine, and have, I confess little tolerance, in consequence,
of a rebel who plays the martyr, and a soldier who is too effeminate an
idler to do anything except attitudinize in interesting situations to
awaken sympathy."

She listened with something of distaste upon her face where she still
leaned against the marble balustrade, toying with the ivory Bedouins.

"I am not much interested in military discussion," she said coldly,
"but I imagine--if you will pardon me for saying so--that you do your
Corporal some little injustice here. I should not fancy he 'affects'
anything, to judge from the very good tone of his manners. For the rest,
I shall not keep the chessmen without making him fitting payment for