Page:Cerise, a tale of the last century (IA cerisetaleoflast00whytrich).pdf/348

 pride, would have taken a strange morbid pleasure in enhancing her own pain by ministering to that woman's happiness.

Therefore she was saved a keen pang now. A pang that might have rendered her agony too terrible to endure. She had not concealed from herself to-night that the thrill of delight she experienced from the arrival of succour was due rather to the person who brought it than to the assistance itself; but almost ere she had time to realise its charm the illusion had been dispelled, and she felt that, dream as it all was, she had been wakened ere she had time to dream it out.

And now it seemed to her that nothing would be so good as the excitement of another skirmish, another struggle, and a sudden death, with the cheers of these brave Englishmen ringing in her ears. A death that Cerise would never forget had been encountered for her safety, that he would sometimes remember, and remembering, accord a smile and a sigh to the beauty he had neglected, and the devotion he had never known till too late.

Engrossed with such thoughts, the Marquise was less alive than usual to surrounding impressions. Presently a deep groan, forced from her companion by combined pain and weakness, against which the sufferer could no longer hold out, roused her to a sense of her situation, which was indeed sufficiently precarious to have warranted much anxiety and alarm.

Hastening to his side, she was shocked to perceive that Bottle-Jack had sunk to the ground, and was now endeavouring ineffectually to support himself on his knees in an attitude of vigilance and defence. The Captain's pistols lay beside him, and he carried his own in each hand, but his glazing eye and fading colour showed that the weapons could be but of little service, and the time seemed fast approaching when the old sailor should be relieved from his duty by an order against which there was no appeal.

The Marquise had scarcely listened to the words while he spoke them, but they came back now, and she understood what he meant when he told her that, if she pleased, "he would keep his watch first."

She looked around and shuddered. It was, indeed, a cheerless position enough. The moon was sinking, and