Yet her eyes were dim with tears, and her heart ached with another's
woe. Doubt of him never came to her; but there was a vague, terrible
pathos in the mystery of his fate that oppressed her with a weight of
future evil, unknown, and unmeasured.
"Is he a madman?" she mused. "If not, he is a martyr; one of the
greatest that ever suffered unknown to other men."
In the coolness of the late evening, in the court of the caravanserai,
her brother and his friends lounged with her and the two ladies of their
touring and sketching party, while they drank their sherbet, and
talked of the Gerome colors of the place, and watched the flame of the
afterglow burn out, and threw millet to the doves and pigeons straying
at their feet.
"My dear Venetia!" cried the Seraph, carelessly tossing handfuls of
grain to the eager birds, "I inquired for your Sculptor-Chasseur--that
fellow Victor--but I failed to see him, for he had been sent on an
expedition shortly after I reached the camp. They tell me he is a fine
soldier; but by what the Marquis said, I fear he is but a handsome
blackguard, and Africa, after all, may be his fittest place."
She gave a bend of her head to show she heard him, stroking the soft
throat of a little dove that had settled on the bench beside her.
"There is a charming little creature there, a little
fire-eater--Cigarette, they call her--who is in love with him, I fancy.
Such a picturesque child!--swears like a trooper, too," continued he who
was now Duke of Lyonnesse.
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