and youth
passes soon when thus adrift on the world), when there should be left
in its stead only shamelessness, hardihood, vice, weariness--those who
found the prettiest jest in her now would be the first to cast aside,
with an oath, the charred, wrecked rocket-stick of a life from which no
golden, careless stream of many-colored fires of coquette caprices would
rise and enchant them then.

"Who is it that sent these?" asked Leon Ramon, later on, as his hands
still wandered among the flowers; for the moment he was at peace; the
ice and the hours of quietude had calmed him.

Cecil told him again.

"What does Cigarette know of her?" he pursued.

"Nothing, except, I believe, she knew that Mme. Corona accepted my
chess-carvings."

"Ah! I thought the Little One was jealous, Victor."

"Jealous? Pshaw! Of whom?"

"Of anyone you admire--especially of this grande dame."

"Absurd!" said Cecil, with a sense of annoyance. "Cigarette is far too
bold a little trooper to have any thoughts of those follies; and as for
this grande dame, as you call her, I shall, in every likelihood, never
see her again--unless when the word is given to 'Carry Swords' or
'Lances' at the General's Salute, where she reins her horse beside M. le
Marechal's at a review, as I have done this morning."

The keen ear of the sick man caught the inflection of an impatience, of
a mortification, in the tone that the speaker himself was unconscious
of. He guessed the truth--that Cecil had never felt more restless under
the shadow of the Eagles than he had done when he had carried his sword
up in the salute as he passed with his regiment the flagstaff where
the aristocracy of Algiers had been gathered about the Marshal and his
staff, and the azure eyes of Mme. la Princesse had glanced carelessly
and critically over the long line of gray horses of those Chasseurs
d'Afrique among whom he rode a bas-officier.

"Cigarette is right," said Ramon, with a slight smile. "Your heart is
with your old order. You are an aristocrat."

"Indeed I am not, mon ami; I am a mere trooper."

"Now! Well, keep your history as you have always done, if you will. What
my friend was matters nothing; I know well what he is, and how true a
friend. As for Milady, she will be best out of your path, Victor. Women!
God!--they are so fatal!"

"Does not our folly make their fatality?"

"Not always; not often. The madness may be ours, but they sow it. Ah! do
they not know how to rouse