She
was at some distance from him, with the trailing draperies of eastern
fabrics falling about her in a rich, unbroken, shadowy cloud of
melting color, through which, here and there, broke threads of gold;
involuntarily he paused on the threshold, looking at her. Some faint,
far-off remembrance stirred in him, but deep down in the closed grave
of his past; some vague, intangible association of forgotten days,
forgotten thoughts, drifted before him as it had drifted before him when
first in the Chambree of his barracks he had beheld Venetia Corona.
She moved forward as her servant announced him; she saw him pause there
like one spell-bound, and thought it the hesitation of one who felt
sensitively his own low grade in life. She came toward him with the
silent, sweeping grace that gave her the carriage of an empress; her
voice fell on his ear with the accent of a woman immeasurably proud,
but too proud not to bend softly and graciously to those who were so
far beneath her that, without such aid from her, they could never have
addressed or have approached her.
"You have come, I trust, to withdraw your prohibition? Nothing will give
me greater pleasure than to bring his Majesty's notice to one of the
best soldiers his Army holds."
There was that in the words, gently as they were spoken, that recalled
him suddenly to himself; they had that negligent, courteous pity she
would have shown to some colon begging at her gates! He forgot--forgot
utterly--that he was only an African trooper.
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