While she clung to my arm and poured this forth in the purest French, pressing my hands to her heart, and casting her earnest and beautiful eyes upward to mine, I felt greatly bewildered, and endeavoured to calm her.
"Who are you?" she asked, for the third time.
"What my uniform declares me to be, madame," said I.
"A British soldier?"
"A sergeant in the Scottish regiment of fusiliers."
"A sergeant! Monsieur seems quite a youth."
"I am an unfortunate gentleman, madame."
"Mon Dieu!"
"A strange destiny has cast me into the same ranks which my father once commanded; but——"
"But what?"