It is
strange-----"
"Very strange. Doubtless you would have given him a good price for
them?"
"Surely I would; any price he should have wished. Do I not owe him my
life?"
At that moment little Musjid let fall a valuable coffee-tray, inlaid
with amber; his master, with muttered apology, hastened to the scene of
the accident; the noise startled Cecil, and his eyes unclosed to all
the dreamy, fantastic colors of the place, and met those bent on him in
musing pity--saw that lustrous, haughty, delicate head bending slightly
down through the many-colored shadows.
He thought he was dreaming, yet on instinct he rose, staggering
slightly, for sharp pain was still darting through his head and temples.
"Madame! Pardon me! Was I sleeping?"
"You were, and rest again. You look ill," she said gently, and there
was, for a moment, less of that accent in her voice, which the night
before had marked so distinctly, so pointedly, the line of demarcation
between a Princess of Spain and a soldier of Africa.
"I thank you; I ail nothing."
He had no sense that he did, in the presence of that face which had
the beauty of his old life; under the charm of that voice which had the
music of his buried years.
"I fear that is scarcely true!" she answered him. "You look in pain;
though as a soldier, perhaps, you will not own it?"
"A headache from the sun--no more, madame."
He was careful not again to forget the social gulf which yawned between
them.
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