servation and intuition; and she had saved many a life by her
knowledge and her patient attendance on the sufferers--patience that she
had been famed for when she had been only six years old, and a surgeon
of the Algerian regiments had affirmed that he could trust her to be as
wakeful, as watchful, and as sure to obey his directions as though she
were a Soeur de Charite. Now, "the little fagot of opposites," as Cecil
had called her, put this skill into active use.

The tent had been a scullion's tent; the poor marmiton had been killed,
and lay outside, with his head clean severed by an Arab flissa; his fire
had gone out, but his brass pots and pans, his jar of fresh water, and
his various preparations for the General's dinner were still there. The
General was dead also; far yonder, where he had fallen in the van of his
Zouaves, exposing himself with all the splendid, reckless gallantry
of France; and the soup stood unserved; the wild plovers were taken by
Flick-Flack; the empty dishes waited for the viands which there were no
hands to prepare and no mouths to eat. Cigarette glanced round, and saw
all with one flash of her eyes; then she knelt down beside the heap
of forage, and, for the first thing, dressed his wounds with the cold,
clear water, and washed away the dust and the blood that covered his
breast.

"He is too good a soldier to die; one must do it for France," she said
to herself, in a kind of self-apology. And as she did it, and bound the
lance-gash close, and bathed his breast, his forehead, his hair, his
beard, free from the sand and the powder and the gore, a thousand
changes swept over her mobile face. It was one moment soft, and flushed,
and tender as passion; it was the next jealous, fiery, scornful, pale,
and full of impatient self-disdain.

He was nothing to her--morbleu! He was an aristocrat, and she was a
child of the people. She had been besieged by dukes and had flouted
princes; she had borne herself in such gay liberty, such vivacious
freedom, such proud and careless sovereignty--bah! what was it to her
whether this man lived or died? If she saved him, he would give her a
low bow as he thanked her; thinking all the while of Milady!

And yet she went on with her work.

Cecil had been stunned by a stroke from his horse's hoof as the
poor beast fell beneath and rolled over him. His wounds were
light--marvelously so, for the thousand strokes that had been aimed at
him; but it was difficult to ar