She praised the good looks of the corporal of chasseurs, and his colonel, M. le Marquis de Châteauroy, answered, with a curse, "I wish my corporal were shot! One can never hear the last of him!"
Meanwhile, the corporal of chasseurs sat alone among the stones of a ruined mosque. He was a dashing cavalry soldier, who had a dozen wounds cut over his body by the Bedouin swords in many and hot skirmishes; who had waited through sultry African nights for the lion's tread; and who had served well in fierce, arduous work in trying campaigns and in close discipline.
From the extremes of luxury and indolence Cecil came to the extremes of hardship and toil. He had borne the change mutely, and without a murmur, though the first years were years of intense misery. His comrades had grown to love him, seeing his courage and his willingness to help them, with a rough, dog-like love.
Twelve years ago in England it was accepted that Bertie Cecil and his servant Rake had been killed in a railway accident in France.
And the solitary corporal of chasseurs read in the "Galignani" of the death of his father, Viscount Royallieu, and of his elder brother. The title and estate that should have been his had gone to his younger brother.
IV.--From Death to Life
The Seraph, now Duke of Lyonesse, and his sister Venetia, Princess Corona, came on a visit to the French camp, and with them Berkeley, Viscount Royallieu. Corporal Louis Victor saw them, and, safe from recognition himself, knew them. But Cecil was not to go down to the grave unreleased. First, his brother Berkeley coming upon him alone in the solitude of a desert camp, made concealment impossible.
"Have you lived stainlessly since?" were Cecil's only words, stern as the demand of a judge.
"God is my witness, yes! But you--they said you were dead. That was my first disgrace, and my last; you bore the weight of my shame. What can I say? Such nobility, such sacrifice--"
It was for himself that Berkeley trembled.