He, in his place among those squadrons, knew her, though so far distant, and endured the deadliest trial of patience which had come to him while beneath the yoke of African discipline. To leave his place was to incur the heaviest punishment; yet he could almost have risked that sentence rather than wait there. Only seven days had gone by since he had been with her under the roof of the caravanserai; but it seemed to him as if these days had aged him more than all the twelve years that he had passed upon the Algerian soil. He was thankful that the enmity of his relentless chief had placed such shadow of evil report between his name and the rewards due to his service, that even the promised recognition of his brilliant actions at Zaraila and elsewhere was postponed a while on the plea of investigation. He was thankful that the honors which the whole Army expected for him, and which the antagonism of Chateauroy would soon be powerless to avert any longer from their meet bestowal, did not force him to go up there in the scorching light of the noon, and take those honors as a soldier of France, under the eyes of the man he loved, of the woman he adored.
As it was, he sat motionless as a statue in his saddle, and never looked westward to where the tricolors of the flagstaff drooped above the head of Venetia Corona.
Thus, he never heard the gallant words spoken in his behalf by the loyal lips that he had not cared to caress. As she passed down the ranks, indeed, he saw and smiled on his little champion; but the smile had only a weary kindness of recognition in it and it wounded Cigarette more than though he had struck her through the breast with his lance.
The moment that he had dreaded came; the troops broke up and marched past the representative of their empire, the cavalry at the head of the divisions. He passed among the rest; he raised his lance so that it hid his features as much as its slender shaft could do; the fair and noble face on which his glance flashed was very pale and very grave; the one beside her was sunny and frank, and unchanged by the years that had drifted by, and its azure eyes, so like her own, sweeping over the masses with all the swift, keen appreciation of a military glance, were so eagerly noting carriage, accouterment, harness, horses, that they never once fell upon the single soldier whose heart so unutterably longed for, even while it dreaded, his recognition.
Venetia gave a low, quick breath of mingled pain and relief as the last of the Chasseurs passed by. The Seraph started, and turned his head.
“My darling! Are you not well?”
“Perfectly!”
“You do not look so; and you forgot now to point me out this special trooper. I forgot him too.”
“He goes there—the tenth from here.”
Her brother looked; it was too late.