Venetia heard her without interruption; a great sadness came over her face as the vivid phrases followed each other. She was too absorbed in the subject of them to heed the challenge and the insolence of their manner. She knew that the Little One who spoke them loved him, though so tenacious to conceal her love; and she was touched, not less by the magnanimity which, for his sake, sought to release him from the African service, than by the hopelessness of his coming years as thus prefigured before her.
“Your reproaches are unneeded,” she replied, slowly and wearily. “I could not abandon one who was once the friend of my family to such a fate as you picture without very great pain. But I do not see how to alter this fate, as you think I could do with so much ease. I am not in its secret; I do not know the reason of its seeming suicide; I have no more connection with its intricacies than you have. This gentleman has chosen his own path; it is not for me to change his choice or spy into his motives.”
Cigarette's flashing, searching eyes bent all their brown light on her.
“Mme. Corona, you are courageous; to those who are so, all things are possible.”
“A great fallacy! You must have seen many courageous men vanquished. But what would you imply by it?”
“That you can help this man, if you will.”
“Would that I could; but I can discern no means—”
“Make them.”
Even in that moment her listener smiled involuntarily at the curt, imperious tones, decisive as Napoleon's “Partons!” before the Passage of the Alps.
“Be certain, if I can, I will. Meantime, there is one pressing danger of which you must be my medium to warn him. He and my brother must not meet. Tell him that the latter, knowing him only as Louis Victor, and interested in the incidents of his military career, will seek him out early to-morrow morning before we quit the camp. I must leave it to him to avoid the meeting as best he may be able.”