When Tremont, with great hesitation, took a few steps away from them and she stood face to face with the creature who had been with Sabron and seen him fall, she said earnestly: "Now speak without reserve. Tell me everything." The face of the man was transformed. He became human, devoted, ardent. "Excellency," he said swiftly in his halting French, "I loved Monsieur le Capitaine. He was so kind and such a brave soldier. I want to go to find Monsieur le Capitaine, but I am ill and too weak to walk. I believe I know where he is hid--I want to go." The girl breathed: "Oh, can it be possible that what you say is true, Hammet Abou? Would you really go if you could?" The man made, with a graceful gesture of his hand, a map in the air. "It was like this," he said; "I think he fell into the bed of an old river. I think he drew himself up the bank. I followed the track of his blood. I was too weak to go any farther, Excellency." "And how could you go now?" she asked. "By caravan, like a merchant, secretly. I would find him." Julia Redmond put out a slim hand, white as a gardenia. The native lifted it and touched his forehead with it. "Hammet Abou," she said, "go away for to-night and come to-morrow--we will see you." And without waiting to speak again to Monsieur de Tremont, the native slid away out of the garden like a shadow, as though his limbs were not weak with disease and his breast shattered by shot. When Monsieur de Tremont had walked once around the garden, keeping his eyes nevertheless on the group, he came back toward Julia Redmond, but not quickly enough, for she ran up the stairs and into the house with Sabron's packet in her hand. CHAPTER XVIII TWO LOVELY WOMEN There was music at the Villa des Bougainvilleas. Miss Redmond sang; not _Good-night, God Keep You Safe_, but other things. Ever since her talk with Hammet Abou she had been, if not gay, in good spirits, more like her old self, and the Marquise d'Esclignac began to think that the image of Charles de Sabron had not been cut too deeply upon her mind. The marquise, from the lounge in the shadow of the room, enjoyed the picture (Sabron would not have added it to his collection) of her niece at the piano and the Duc de Tremont by her side. The Comtesse de la Maine sat in a little shadow of her own, musing and enjoying the picture of the Duc de Tremont and Miss Redmond very indifferently. She did not sing; she had no parlor accomplishments. She was poor, a widow, and had a child. She was not a brilliant match. From where he stood, Tremont could see the Comtesse de la Maine in her little shadow, the oriental decorations a background to her slight Parisian figure, and a little out of the shadow, the bright aigret in her hair danced, shaking its sparkles of fire. She looked infinitely sad and infinitely appealing. One bare arm was along the back of her lounge. She leaned her head upon her hand.