It was a woman he saw, a small and slender woman, lying almost at full length, supported by a sliding pile of cushions, the one on which her head rested being a huge square of gold-tinted satin, with peacocks’ feathers stitched down in all directions upon the smooth silk. Below her on the ground was a little inlaid Turkish table, on which burnt, in rather dangerous proximity to the lady’s light draperies, an open lamp. A loose but clinging garment of soft white stuff hid her figure and yet disclosed its outlines, the graceful curves from shoulder to hip, and from hip to heel, while the tip of an embroidered velvet slipper peeped out beneath its folds, and a slender rounded arm, laden from shoulder to wrist with armlets and bracelets, gold, silver and enamelled, escaping from its loose open sleeve, hung down straight over the side of the divan, and looked in the soft light which fell on it from the lamp, like purest ivory seen in the last rays of a sunset. Long gold and silver chains which, had she been erect, would have reached below her waist, hung round her neck and jingled together over the side of the couch. A great soft scarf of many skilfully blended colours was bound about her waist and fastened by a large Indian ornament of roughly hewn precious stones. The robe she wore had become disarranged by her reclining posture, so that great folds of the soft white muslin had gathered about her neck, forming a white nest-like frame for her small head, which was covered by a tiny scarlet velvet cap, from under which her short and curly black hair escaped in a tangled bush that cast a shade over a little white face. Her eyes were closed and a most ghastly livid pallor was spread over her features from forehead to chin; so that Lauriston, with a great shock, was awakened out of the state of moonstruck bewilderment and admiration into which the strange sight had thrown him, by a horrible belief that he was standing in the presence of a dead woman.
“Great Heaven!” broke from his stammering lips as he made one quick step forward.
But at the sound of his voice the sleeping girl awoke; and her opening eyes falling at once upon a stranger, she sprang into a sitting position with a startled cry. In a moment he saw what had caused his mistake. A blue glass in one side of the octagonal lantern above had thrown a livid light on the young girl’s face, which he now saw to be healthily flushed with sleep, and animated with the most vivid alarm.
He was retreating hastily with a confused murmur of apologies for his intrusion, when a bright glare of flame flashed up blindingly in a pointed tongue of light and smoke towards the ceiling, and with a shriek the girl started to her feet. The hanging open sleeve of her white gown had caught fire as, waking like a child and not yet quite mistress of all her faculties, she had, in her change of position, allowed the flimsy light material to swing over the little lamp. Lauriston’s light overcoat hung on his arm. He wrapped it round the panting, struggling, moaning girl, swept up with his left hand a leopard skin that was uppermost amongst the rugs at his feet, and binding that also tightly about her, succeeded in very few moments in stifling the flame. He had said nothing all the while, there being no time for discussion; the girl, after the first cry, had submitted, with only low murmurs of fright and pain, to his quick and vigorous treatment. He looked down, when she at last fell merely to sighing and trembling and gasping for breath, at the curly head from which the little scarlet cap had fallen in his rough embrace. The thick tousle of hair, soft, not as silk, but as finest wool, was entirely innocent of curling tongs, and hung in disorder about a face which had something more of passion, something more of a most innocent voluptuousness in every curve and in every glance than are ever to be found in the countenance of an English girl.
Lauriston still held the little creature tightly in his arms, and as he did so the feelings of pity and anxiety, which had been the first to stir in his heart when his prompt measures choked down the rising flame, gave place to an impulse of tenderness as she looked up with long, soft, shining, black eyes full of wondering inquiry. This small helpless thing, quivering and sighing in his arms and gazing with the velvet, innocent eyes of a fawn into his face, made his heart leap; with an agitation new and strange, he pressed her close to him, and clasped her head against his breast.
If it had been indeed a fawn that he had been caressing, he could not have been more amazed and confused when the girl slipped lithely through his arms, and shaking off the impromptu bandages in which he had swathed her, tossed the ends of her long scarf over her burnt and blistered left arm and the blackened rags of her sleeve and bodice, and said haughtily, in English as good as his own, and moreover with the accent of perfect refinement:
“I am much obliged to you, sir, for your kind help; but as you are a complete stranger to me, I shall be glad if you will either give an explanation of your visit, or bring it to a close!”
The unexpected dignity and self-possession of this young creature, who could not be more than sixteen, together with the shock of discovering that the fantastic and dreamy-eyed being whom he had been treating somewhat in the free-and-easy fashion of the Arabian Nights was a mere nineteenth century young English lady, reduced poor Lauriston to a level of abject consternation. And yet, against her will, there was something in her indignation more alluring than repellent; even as he stammered out the first words of a humble apology, the transient gleam of anger faded out of her long eyes, and he saw only before him a graceful tiny creature, calling forth his pity by the pain in her arm which made her wince and bite her under lip, and passionate yearning admiration by the seductive charm of every attitude and every movement.
“I beg you to forgive my intrusion, madam. This address was given to me, by mistake, as that of one of my friends. I can’t describe to you the distress I feel at my share in your accident. Tell me how to summon your friends; I will go at once, and send a doctor. Please forgive me; for heaven’s sake, forgive me.”
White wet beads stood on his forehead; he was in an agony as, the danger past, she evidently felt more and more acutely the smarting pain of her injured arm and shoulder. She gave way, as her plaintive eyes met those of the young soldier, and burst into tears.