o she took her meals there, trembling,
but in her fashion resolute and courageous. The crash of cannon-shot was
forever associated with her first reception in Acadia. Therefore this
siege was a torture to her memory as well as a peril to her body. The
tower had no more sheltered place, however, than Lady Dorinda's room.
Zelie had orders to wait upon her with strict attention. The cannonading
dying away as darkness lifted its wall between the opposed forces, she
hoped for such sleep as could be had in a besieged place, and waited
Zelie's knock. War, like a deluge, may drive people who detest each
other into endurable contact; and when, without even a warning stroke on
the panel, Le Rossignol slipped in as nimbly as a spider, Lady Dorinda
felt no such indignation as she would have felt in ordinary times.

"May I sit by your fire, your highness?" sweetly asked the dwarf. Lady
Dorinda held out a finger to indicate the chimney-side and to stay
further progress. The sallow and corpulent woman gazed at the beak-faced
atom.

"It hath been repeated a thousand times, but I will say again I am no
highness."

Le Rossignol took the rebuke as a bird might have taken it, her bright
round eyes reflecting steadily the overblown mortal opposite. She had
never called Lady Dorinda anything except "her highness." The dullest
soldier grinned at the apt sarcastic title. When Marie brought her to
account for this annoyance, she explained that she could not call Lady
Dorinda anything else. Was a poor dwarf to be punished because people
made light of every word she used? Yet this innocent creature took a
pleasure of her own in laying the term like an occasional lash on the
woman who so despised her. Le Rossignol sat with arms around her knees,
on the hearth corner. Lady Dorinda in her cushioned chair chewed
aromatic seeds.

The room, like a flower garden, exhaled all its perfumes at evening.
Bottles of essences and pots of pomade and small bags of powders were
set out, for the luxurious use of its inmate when Zelie prepared her for
the night. Le Rossignol enjoyed these scents. The sweet-odored
atmosphere which clung about Lady Dorinda was her one attribute approved
by the dwarf. Madame Marie never in any way appealed to the nose. Madame
Marie's garments were scentless as outdoor air, and the freshness of
outdoor air seemed to belong to them. Le Rossignol liked to have her
senses stimulated, and she counted it a lucky thing to sit by that dee