CHAPTER XIV AN AMERICAN GIRL The Marquise d'Esclignac saw that she had to reckon with an American girl. Those who know these girls know what their temper and mettle are, and that they are capable of the finest reverberations. Julia Redmond was very young. Otherwise she would never have let Sabron go without one sign that she was not indifferent to him, and that she was rather bored with the idea of titles and fortunes. But she adored her aunt and saw, moreover, something else than ribbons and velvets in the make-up of the aunt. She saw deeper than the polish that a long Parisian lifetime had overlaid, and she loved what she saw. She respected her aunt, and knowing the older lady's point of view, had been timid and hesitating until now. Now the American girl woke up, or rather asserted herself. "My dear Julia," said the Marquise d'Esclignac, "are you sure that all the tinned things, the cocoa, and so forth, are on board? I did not see that box." "_Ma tante_," returned her niece from her steamer chair, "it's the only piece of luggage I am sure about." At this response her aunt suffered a slight qualm for the fate of the rest of her luggage, and from her own chair in the shady part of the deck glanced toward her niece, whose eyes were on her book. "What a practical girl she is," thought the Marquise d'Esclignac. "She seems ten years older than I. She is cut out to be the wife of a poor man. It is a pity she should have a fortune. Julia would have been charming as love in a cottage, whereas I..." She remembered her hotel on the Parc Monceau, her château by the Rhone, her villa at Biarritz--and sighed. She had not always been the Marquise d'Esclignac; she had been an American girl first and remembered that her maiden name had been De Puyster and that she had come from Schenectady originally. But for many years she had forgotten these things. Near to Julia Redmond these last few weeks all but courage and simplicity had seemed to have tarnish on its wings. Sabron had not been found. It was a curious fact, and one that transpires now and then in the history of desert wars--the man is lost. The captain of the cavalry was missing, and the only news of him was that he had fallen in an engagement and that his body had never been recovered. Several sorties had been made to find him; the war department had done all that it could; he had disappeared from the face of the desert and even his bones could not be found. From the moment that Julia Redmond had confessed her love for the Frenchman, a courage had been born in her which never faltered, and her aunt seemed to have been infected by it. The marquise grew sentimental, found out that she was more docile and impressionable than she had believed herself to be, and the veneer and etiquette (no doubt never a very real part of her) became less important than other things. During the last few weeks she had been more a De Puyster from Schenectady than the Marquise d'Esclignac.