“Marie!—Yes. She is my daughter. And now, sergeant—if you would oppose the aunt, you will not oppose the mother. I tell you a marriage with the captain would be misery. So you will persuade her to marry the duke—a man of high character, I assure you, sergeant.”
“I—yes—certainly.”
“Then go at once to her, for I hear a carriage at the door.”
Away went the sergeant—as dejected as though the brave eleventh had been signally defeated and cut to shreds.
“Ting—ting”—went the castle bell. The visitors came pouring in, and amongst them the duke and his mother, the duchess; with the inevitable notary.
When Marie came in with the sergeant, she ran to the marquise, and embraced her with more warmth than she had ever shown. In one dismal word or two she promised to obey her newly-found mother.
Then the preparations went on for signing the unavoidable contract.
Meanwhile, the high-flown marquise was asking herself whether the duke was altogether so admirable a party, and she was beginning to see it more clearly than she had seen for many years, the joys of that early martial life of hers, and the happy, loving husband her captain made.
And while she sat recalling that old time there was a great whirr from without. The next moment twenty common soldiers of the brave eleventh had burst into the room, headed by the Captain Tony. For love will make cowards of us, as he will, at his capricious pleasure, make us heroes of bravery.
And then, and there, before all that fine company, they called out in a loud voice to the marquise’s daughter, addressed her as Marie, reminded her of vivandiering days, and recommended her to desert.