"So the damsel was released?" said I, who had listened with some amusement to the story, which was told me with implicit faith in its veracity.
"Yes; but the devil, ere he went back to Memphis, paid a terrible visit to his first summoner; for the young man was found in the garden of olives, strangled, with the marks of talons in his throat. So, mon ami, never again have recourse to such persons as Abd-el-Rasig. Promise this to your little sister, Archange!"
"I may well promise you that, or anything else you ask," said I, charmed by her winning manner. "How sweetly your name sounds when pronounced by yourself."
"Do you really think so?" she asked, while her dark eyebrows arched up. "My godfather named me Archange, that I might be under the protection of the archangels. You comprehend me, monsieur? When I joined the order of the soeurs de la charité for my noviciate in the Rue du Vieux Colombier, to share with the Sisters of St. Martha the care of the sick in the hospitals of Paris, they saw no reason to change it; and hence I am still, as I was before—before I thought of being a sister of charity—Archange."
To a sick man's ear, there was a soothing charm in the girl's voice and its intonation. Then her broken English, her earnestness, truthfulness, and intense faith in all the little religious legends and anecdotes with which she amused us, were all fascinating, and there came a time when I missed her, and then sorely. Add to all these that, in the girl's beautiful but colourless face, there was an expression singularly pure, noble, and frank, lofty, and at times sublime. I was very curious to know her surname, and the reason why she had adopted a life of such privation and peril as that of a Sister of Charity—an order so severe, and whose duties were a ceaseless round of privation and peril. Without being uncourteously curious, I knew not how to approach the subject; but next day, after Jack Studhome and Fred Wilford (who rode over from the camp) had retired, she imparted the little story of her past life of her own accord, and the circumstance came about very simply, through a mere remark of mine. The mail steamer had come in from Constantinople, but Studhome had no letter for me.
"Ah, ma soeur Archange, I begin to be torn by jealousy," said I.
"Why?" she asked, gently.
"I cannot say why, as the only man in England I have reason to fear is a creature so contemptible."
"Then wherefore give way to a weakness so odious and so tempting?"
"Tempting?" I repeated.