Cigarette was the pet of the army of Africa, and was as lawless as most of her patrons.  She was the Friend of the Flag.  Soldiers had been about her from her cradle.  They had been her books, her teachers, her guardians, and, later on, her lovers, all the days of her life.  She had no sense of duty taught her, except to face fire boldly, never to betray a comrade, and to worship but two deities—­“la Gloire” and “la France.”  Her own sex would have seen no good in her, but her comrades-in-arms could, and did.  A certain chasseur d’Afrique in this army at Algiers puzzled her.  He treated her with a grave courtesy, that made her wish, with impatient scorn for the wish, that she knew how to read, and had not her hair cut short like a boy’s—­a weakness the little vivandiere had never been visited with before.

“You are too fine for us, mon brave,” she said pettishly once to this chasseur.  “They say you are English, but I don’t believe it.  Say what you are, then?”

“A soldier of France.  Can you wish me more?”

“True,” she said simply.  “But you were not always a soldier of France?  You joined, they say, twelve years ago.  What were you before then?”

“Before?” he answered slowly.  “Well—­a fool”

“You belonged to the majority, then!” said Cigarette.  “But why did you come into the service?  You were born in the noblesse—­bah, I know an aristocrat at a glance!  What ruined you, Monsieur l’Aristocrat?”

“Aristocrat?  I am none.  I am Louis Victor, a corporal of the chasseurs.”

“You are dull, mon brave.”

Cigarette left him, and made her way to the officers’ quarters.  High or low, they were all the same to Cigarette, and she would have talked to the emperor himself as coolly as she did to any private.

She praised the good looks of the corporal of chasseurs, and his colonel, M. le Marquis de Chateauroy, answered, with a curse, “I wish my corporal were shot!  One can never hear the last of him!”

Meanwhile, the corporal of chasseurs sat alone among the stones of a ruined mosque.  He was a dashing cavalry soldier, who had a dozen wounds cut over his body by the Bedouin swords in many and hot skirmishes; who had waited through sultry African nights for the lion’s tread; and who had served well in fierce, arduous work in trying campaigns and in close discipline.

From the extremes of luxury and indolence Cecil came to the extremes of hardship and toil.  He had borne the change mutely, and without a murmur, though the first years were years of intense misery.  His comrades had grown to love him, seeing his courage and his willingness to help them, with a rough, dog-like love.

Twelve years ago in England it was accepted that Bertie Cecil and his servant Rake had been killed in a railway accident in France.

And the solitary corporal of chasseurs read in the “Galignani” of the death of his father, Viscount Royallieu, and of his elder brother.  The title and estate that should have been his had gone to his younger brother.