The words died in her throat. The Marshal swung around with a rapid sign to a staff officer.
“Pens and ink! Instantly! My brave child, what can we say to you? I will send an aid to arrest the execution of the sentence. It must be deferred till we know the whole truth of this. If it be as it looks now, he shall be saved if the Empire can save him!”
She looked up in his eyes with a look that froze his very heart.
“His honor!” she muttered; “his honor—if not his life!”
He understood her; he bowed his haughty head low down to hers.
“True. We will cleanse that, if all other justice be too late.”
The answer was infinitely gentle, infinitely solemn. Then he turned and wrote his hurried order, and bade his aid go with it without a second's loss. But Cigarette caught it from his hand.
“To me! to me! No other will go so fast!”
“But, my child, you are worn out already.”
She turned on him her beautiful, wild eyes, in which the blinding, passionate tears were floating.