t of the child in the garden at
Baden.

"That box is mine!" cried the princess. "I gave it! And you? You are my
brother's friend? You are Bertie Cecil?"

"_Petite reine_!" he murmured.

Then he acknowledged who he was, not even for his brother's sake could
he have lied to _her_; but he implored her to say nothing to the Seraph.
"I was innocent, but in honour I can never give you or any living thing
_proof_ that this crime was not mine."

"He is either a madman or a martyr," she mused, when Cecil had left her.
That he loved her was plain, and the time was not far distant when she
should love him, and be willing to share any sacrifice love and honour
might demand.

The hatred of Colonel Chateauroy for his corporal brought matters to a
climax. Meeting Cecil returning from his visit to Venetia, Chateauroy
could not refrain from saying insulting things concerning the princess.

"_You lie_!" cried Cecil; "and you know that you lie! Breathe her name
once more, and, as we are both living men, I will have your life for
your outrage!"

And as he spoke Cecil smote him on the lips.

Chateauroy summoned the guard, the corporal was placed under arrest, and
brought to court-martial.

In three days' time Corporal Louis Victor would be shot by order of the
court-martial.

Cigarette, and Cigarette alone, prevented the sentence being carried
out, and that at the cost of her life.

She was away from the camp at the time in a Moorish town when the news
came to her; and she stumbled on Berkeley Cecil, and, knowing him for an
Englishman, worked on his feelings, and gave him no rest till he had
acknowledged the condemned man for his elder brother and the lawful
Viscount Royallieu, peer of England.

With this document, signed and sealed by Berkeley, Cigarette galloped
off to the fortress where the marshal of France, who was Viceroy of
Africa, had arrived. The marshal knew Cigarette; he had decorated her
with the cross for her valour in battle, and with the whole army of
Africa he loved and admired her.

Cigarette gave him the document, and told him all she knew of the
corporal's heroism. And the marshal promised the sentence should be
deferred until he had found out the whole truth of the matter.

With the order of release in her bosom Cigarette once more vaulted into
the saddle, to ride hard through the day and night--for at sunrise on
the morrow will the sentence be executed.

And now it is sunrise, and the prisoner has be