The carriage was ready at last, but as she stepped into it, she turned her head to her then old companions.
They had hoped she was going to run away to them, under which evidence of preference they would have defied the marquise, but the next moment she was seated, and “our carriage” rolled away.
Her eyes were upon her old friends till she could see no more for tears and distance.
And there poor Tony stood despairingly watching the carriage, his hat pressed with both hands to his heart, and the cruel, triumphant little ribbons fluttering about in the breeze.
CHAPTER II.
At home in the grand castle, dressed, no longer like a vivandiere, but like a real young lady, sat Marie. She was not happy, but she cannot be said to have been utterly miserable—that sparkling young girl could not be utterly miserable; but she was half way on the journey to utter misery, and she, erst vivandiere, did not like the road.
To be dressed in the fashion—to learn lessons—to make curtseys to grand folks—all these things want an early apprenticeship. If you go into the business after you have gone out of pinafores, you are pretty sure to fail.
And Marie failed signally. Every day there arose a series of contentions between Marie and the marquise; and when the young lady was seated amongst the grand people of an evening, listening to vapid songs about Venus, and Phillis, and all the rest of the delicately-finger-topped crowd, she longed to get up, bang a drum, sing the rataplan, and show them all how they marched in the brave eleventh. But she did not at any time carry such a wish into practice, or the young duke, whose name it is perfectly needless to know, would certainly not have proposed for her hand and heart, as the young duke certainly did, to Marie’s great concern.
When, some little time after, Marie had become a lady, the war broke out again—when again the old regiment was near “my Castle of Berkenfelt”—and when the grizzly Serjeant Sulpice was wounded, the marquise could not refuse Marie’s request that the sergeant should remain at the castle till he could again fight in the field. So, rash with mild gratitude, the marquise let this tempter into her fold.