'You are too young and too handsome to be killed and disembowelled by the big Zulus,' said she after a pause; 'they could eat a boy like you. Why don't you desert and go to the Diamond Fields?'
'Thank you; I would die rather than do that!'
'And so you serve the Queen, my dear?' she said sneeringly.
'Yes.'
'For what reason do you fight the poor Zulus?'
'Honour,' replied Florian curtly.
'I have read—I have some book-knowledge, you see—that when a Swiss officer was reproached by a French one that he fought for pay, and not like himself for honour, "So be it," replied the Swiss, "we each of us fight for that which he is most in need of."'
'I don't see the allusion in this instance: a soldier, I do my duty and obey orders.'
'Have a drop more of the squareface—you can't be so rude as to refuse a lady,' she continued, filling up a long glass, which she put to her lips, and then to those of Florian, who pretended to sip and then put the glass down.
He was at a loss to understand her and her advances. Vanity quite apart, he knew that he was a good-looking young fellow, and that his uniform 'set him off;' but he remembered the face at the window, and was on his guard against her in every way. Would she have acted thus with an officer? he thought; and in what relation did she stand to the truculent-looking landlord—wife, daughter, or sister? Probably none of them at all.