IV.—­From Death to Life

The Seraph, now Duke of Lyonesse, and his sister Venetia, Princess Corona, came on a visit to the French camp, and with them Berkeley, Viscount Royallieu.  Corporal Louis Victor saw them, and, safe from recognition himself, knew them.  But Cecil was not to go down to the grave unreleased.  First, his brother Berkeley coming upon him alone in the solitude of a desert camp, made concealment impossible.

“Have you lived stainlessly since?” were Cecil’s only words, stern as the demand of a judge.

“God is my witness, yes!  But you—­they said you were dead.  That was my first disgrace, and my last; you bore the weight of my shame.  What can I say?  Such nobility, such sacrifice—­”

It was for himself that Berkeley trembled.

“I have kept your secret twelve years; I will keep it still,” said Cecil gravely.  “Only leave Algeria at once.”

A slight incident revealed the corporal’s identity to the Princess Corona.  By his bearing he had attracted the attention of the visitors to the camp, and on being admitted to the villa of the princess to restore a gold chain dropped carelessly in the road, he disclosed the little enamelled box, marked “Venetia,” the gift of the child in the garden at Baden.

“That box is mine!” cried the princess.  “I gave it!  And you?  You are my brother’s friend?  You are Bertie Cecil?”

“Petite reine!” he murmured.

Then he acknowledged who he was, not even for his brother’s sake could he have lied to her; but he implored her to say nothing to the Seraph.  “I was innocent, but in honour I can never give you or any living thing proof that this crime was not mine.”

“He is either a madman or a martyr,” she mused, when Cecil had left her.  That he loved her was plain, and the time was not far distant when she should love him, and be willing to share any sacrifice love and honour might demand.

The hatred of Colonel Chateauroy for his corporal brought matters to a climax.  Meeting Cecil returning from his visit to Venetia, Chateauroy could not refrain from saying insulting things concerning the princess.

“You lie!” cried Cecil; “and you know that you lie!  Breathe her name once more, and, as we are both living men, I will have your life for your outrage!”

And as he spoke Cecil smote him on the lips.

Chateauroy summoned the guard, the corporal was placed under arrest, and brought to court-martial.

In three days’ time Corporal Louis Victor would be shot by order of the court-martial.

Cigarette, and Cigarette alone, prevented the sentence being carried out, and that at the cost of her life.

She was away from the camp at the time in a Moorish town when the news came to her; and she stumbled on Berkeley Cecil, and, knowing him for an Englishman, worked on his feelings, and gave him no rest till he had acknowledged the condemned man for his elder brother and the lawful Viscount Royallieu, peer of England.