"Think of what I owe you, my life!" said Mademoiselle de Broglie, and as our hands chanced to touch each other, we both trembled without knowing why.
"I have met with so little kindness in the world, mademoiselle, that there is no chance of my stock of gratitude becoming exhausted. My birthright is that of the disinherited—obscurity, poverty, and mortification," said I, sadly.
"Ah! What is this you tell me?" she exclaimed, turning her fine eyes full upon me.
"My family have made me, as it were, an Ishmael—an outcast from amid them; but they shall find——" I clenched my teeth and paused in the act of saying something bitter, for somehow my cousin Aurora's kind face came to memory. "Ah! Mademoiselle de Broglie, if there was a being in the world to whom I would lay open my whole heart—to whom I would reveal the sad story of my past life, it is to you—you to whom I owe so much."
"Your sad story, do you say?"
"Yes."
"At your years!" she exclaimed, while Angelique relinquished her netting, and her dark eyes dilated as she listened.
"Yes, mademoiselle."
"Ah, mon Dieu! this is terrible!"
I paused again, for I scarcely knew what to say. Aware that all the armies of Europe had long been teeming with desperate soldiers of Fortune, the exiles of Scotland and Ireland, among whom were the claimants of many attainted titles, from dukedoms and marquisates, down to simple knighthood, I felt almost ashamed to reveal my real rank, lest she might disbelieve me, and I should thus lose her esteem. I deemed it better to remain as she deemed me, the poor gentleman, the "simple soldat."