She felt that she could only thank, as she would have thanked an equal who should have done her this sort of slight service, the man who had brought to her the gold pieces with which his Colonel had insulted him.
“It is I, madame, who am the debtor of so happy an accident.”
His words were very low, and his voice shook a little over them; he was thinking not of the jeweled toy that he came here to restore, but of the inheritance that had passed away from him forever, and which, possessed, would have given him the title to seek what his own efforts could do to wake a look of tenderness in those proud eyes which men ever called so cold, but which he felt might still soften, and change, and grow dark with the thoughts and the passions of love, if the soul that gazed through them were but once stirred from its repose.
“Your chain is here, madame, though broken, I regret to see,” he continued, as he took the little box from his coat and handed it to her. She took it, and thanked him, without, for the moment, opening the enamel case as she motioned him to a seat at a little distance from her own.
“You have been in terrible scenes since I saw you last,” she continued. “The story of Zaraila reached us. Surely they cannot refuse you the reward of your service now?”
“It will make little difference, madame, whether they do or not.”
“Little difference! How is that?”
“To my own fate, I meant. Whether I be captain or a corporal cannot alter——”
He paused; he dreaded lest the word should escape him which should reveal to her that which she would regard as such intolerable offense, such insolent indignity, when felt for her by a soldier in the grade he held.
“No? Yet such recognition is usually the ambition of every military life.”