“Very possibly,” she said, with an indolent indifference; “but that man was no actor, and I never saw a gentleman if he have not been one.” “Like enough,” answered the Marquis. “I believe many 'gentlemen' come into our ranks who have fled their native countries and broken all laws from the Decalogue to the Code Napoleon. So long as they fight well, we don't ask their past criminalities. We cannot afford to throw away a good soldier because he has made his own land too hot to hold him.” “Of what country is your Corporal, then?” “I have not an idea. I imagine his past must have been something very black, indeed, for the slightest trace of it has never, that I know of, been allowed to let slip from him. He encourages the men in every insubordination, buys their favor with every sort of stage trick, thinks himself the finest gentleman in the whole brigades of Africa, and ought to have been shot long ago, if he had had his real deserts.” She let her glance dwell on him with a contemplation that was half contemptuous amusement, half unexpressed dissent. “I wonder he has not been, since you have the ruling of his fate,” she said, with a slight smile lingering about the proud, rich softness of her lips. “So do I.” There was a gaunt, grim, stern significance in the three monosyllables that escaped him unconsciously; it made her turn and look at him more closely. “How has he offended you?” she asked. Chateauroy laughed off her question. “In a thousand ways, madame. Chiefly because I received my regimental training under one who followed the traditions of the Armies of Egypt and the Rhine, and have, I confess little tolerance, in consequence, of a rebel who plays the martyr, and a soldier who is too effeminate an idler to do anything except attitudinize in interesting situations to awaken sympathy.” She listened with something of distaste upon her face where she still leaned against the marble balustrade, toying with the ivory Bedouins. “I am not much interested in military discussion,” she said coldly, “but I imagine--if you will pardon me for saying so--that you do your Corporal some little injustice here. I should not fancy he 'affects' anything, to judge from the very good tone of his manners. For the rest, I shall not keep the chessmen without making him fitting payment for them; since he declines money, you will tell me what form that had better take to be of real and welcome service to a Chasseur d'Afrique.” Chateauroy, more incensed than he chose or dared to show, bowed courteously, but with a grim, ironic smile. “If you really insist, give him a Napoleon or two whenever you see him; he will be very happy to take it and spend it au cabaret, though he played the aristocrat to-day. But you are too good to him, he is one of the very worst of my pratiques; and you are as cruel to me in refusing to deign to accept my trooper's worthless bagatelles at my hands.”