The boy gazed at Madame Ravenel’s refined and melancholy beauty, and felt a renewal of the charm which she exercised over all sensitive natures. Then his heart began to beat furiously as his mother said:
“I have often admired, Madame, the little girl that I have seen with you in the park—your sister, I believe.”
“Yes,” replied Sophie, “my little half-sister, of whom I had the charge during all her babyhood, and who is like a child to both of us.”
“She is very, very pretty,” said Madame Verney, hoping that embodied prettiness would one day belong to her Paul, together with all that went with it.
“And very good-hearted,” replied Sophie, smiling. “She is not a French child—my stepmother was American, and Lucie is like her, unconventional and even wilful, but good and tender-hearted beyond any creature that I have ever known. She lives with our grandmother, and grandmothers, you know, are not very severe mentors, so I am afraid my little sister does not get as good discipline as she would have had if her mother had lived; and when she comes to visit us, Captain Ravenel spoils her so—”
Sophie stopped, turning her full, soft gaze on Captain Ravenel. She thought him the best, the noblest of men, and did not love him the less because he was so indulgent to Lucie.
Monsieur Verney, putting his hand on Paul’s shoulder, told Captain Ravenel that there was the future Murat of the French army. Paul’s father was always joking him, but the boy did not mind it in the least, and laughed at the notion of being a great cavalry officer.
“So you are going into the cavalry, eh?” asked Captain Ravenel. “Why not the artillery?” Ravenel himself had been an artillery officer.
“Because I am not clever enough, I am afraid,” replied Paul frankly; “an officer has to be very clever to be in the artillery—clever at his books, I mean, and I am not very clever at my books.”
“We do not complain,” said Monsieur Verney, in response to this speech, “he does very well at his books, but he has always wished to be in the cavalry, so I presume that is where he will land eventually.”