Her long dark eyelashes flickered as she looked coyly at him, and then cast them down.
'I have never cared for another woman since that time,' said the General after a pause; 'and I never shall if I lived for—for—as long as the Brigade has been in Holland—and that is two hundred years.'
She laughed, but noiselessly; for she knew that when he began to talk thus, how his thoughts were wandering, and that he might, after all, begin to think that his future, for pleasure or pain, lay in the little white hands of the charming widow before him—of herself—the Mercedes of his early days by the Berbice river.
'As for the Count——' she began, but paused, for the General made a gesture of impatience, and playing with his sword-knot, said:
'Well, you married him, and not John Kinloch. You are a free woman now; would you like to take my heart in your toils again, Mercedes, to make sport of it after all these years?'
'Do not speak to me thus,' said she in her most seductive voice, as she touched his hand caressingly; 'I say too, after all these years, do not be so implacable. Ah! what must I think of you?'
'Think what you please.'
Again the long lashes flickered, and the snow-white eyelids drooped.
The General felt his position was becoming imperilled, that he 'was getting his flanks turned,' and so forth; and he rose to retire.
But the General resumed his seat, and began to look a little vacantly and helplessly about him.