I followed him into the tent from which he had just emerged, and found myself in the presence of an individual whose appearance differed so entirely from that of the rest of the band, that I could not help wondering what could possibly have induced her to associate herself with them.
Start not, reader, at the word her—it is no misprint; I actually found myself in the presence of a woman. Not such an one, either, as might be expected to be found—if indeed one would expect to find a woman at all—amid such surroundings; not an old, withered, vindictive-looking hag, repulsive alike in appearance and manner, but a woman, youthful, handsome, and to all appearance gentle, though her demeanour was somewhat cold and distant.
I set her down at about three or four and twenty years of age. She was reclining on a pile of rugs when I entered the tent, so I could not just then judge of her stature, but before the interview terminated she had risen to her feet, and I then saw that she was rather above medium height. Her skin was dazzling fair, hair and eyes black as night; the beauty of the latter being rather marred, according to my taste, by a curious glitter, which, but for the calmness of their owner’s demeanour, I should have regarded as slightly suggestive of incipient insanity. Her figure, clothed in a picturesque, if somewhat theatrical, adaptation of the costume of her comrades, was somewhat slight, but eminently graceful, while her hands and feet would have delighted a sculptor with their symmetry. Her voice was especially beautiful, being a full, rich, and powerful contralto.
The midshipmen of the British navy have not as yet rendered themselves especially remarkable by their bashfulness, and I was neither much better nor much worse than my neighbours in that respect; but I was so taken aback when I entered the tent and my eyes met those of its occupant, that I could only bow somewhat awkwardly, blushing like a simpleton the while.
“This, signora, is the prisoner of whom I told you,” said my conductor by way of introduction.
“Why, he is a mere boy, Benedetto; and wounded, too! What is the nature of your wound, child?”
“A broken arm, signora,” I replied unsteadily; the unexpected accents of pity in her voice, or the excruciating pain I had been suffering for the previous four hours, suddenly unnerving me.
“Poor fellow!” she exclaimed. “And it has not been attended to. How did it happen?”
“A stray ball struck me this morning, when the party under this gentleman surprised and shot down the French detachment,” I answered.
A gleam of almost fiendish ferocity passed like a lightning-flash across the beautiful face of my fair interrogator at the mention of the French; but it disappeared again in an instant, and, turning to Benedetto, she asked with just the slightest ring of harshness in her voice,—