another world than an African trooper's. So best!"

Yet they were stars of which he thought more, as he wended his way back
to the barracks, than of the splendid constellations of the Algerian
evening that shone with all the luster of the day, but with the soft,
enchanted light which transfigured sea, and earth, and sky as never did
the day's full glow, as he returned to the mechanical duties, to the
thankless services, to the distasteful meal, to the riotous mirth, to
the coarse comradeship, which seemed to him to-night more bitter than
they had ever done since his very identity, his very existence, had
been killed and buried past recall, past resurrection, under the kepi
d'ordonnance of a Chasseur d'Afrique.

Meanwhile the Princess Corona drove homeward--homeward to where a
temporary home had been made by her in the most elegant of the many
snow-white villas that stud the sides of the Sahel and face the bright
bow of the sunlit bay; a villa with balconies, and awnings, and cool,
silent chambers, and rich, glowing gardens, and a broad, low roof, half
hidden in bay and orange and myrtle and basilica, and the liquid sound
of waters bubbling beneath a riotous luxuriance of blossom.

Mme. la Princesse passed from her carriage to her own morning room and
sank down on a couch, a little listless and weary with her search among
the treasures of the Algerine bazaars. It was purposeless work, after
all. Had she not bronzes, and porcelains, and bric-a-brac, and objets
d'art in profusion in her Roman villa, her Parisian hotel, her great,
grim palace in Estremadura.

"Not one of those things do I want--not one shall I look at twice. The
money would have been better at the soldiers' hospital," she thought,
while her eyes dwelt on a chess-table near her--a table on which the
mimic hosts of Chasseurs and Arabs were ranged in opposite squadrons.

She took the White King in her hand and gazed at it with a certain
interest.

"That man has been noble once," she thought. "What a fate--what a cruel
fate!"

It touched her to great pity; although proud with too intense a pride,
her nature was exceedingly generous, and, when once moved, deeply
compassionate. The unerring glance of a woman habituated to the first
society of Europe had told her that the accent, the bearing, the tone,
the features of this soldier, who only asked of life "oblivion," were
those of one originally of gentle blood; and the dignity and patience of
his accep