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Updated: June 17, 2025
Watching the smoker, Saint-Prosper asked himself how came Mauville to be serving against his own country, or why he should have enlisted at all, this pleasure-seeking man of the world, to whom the hardships of a campaign must have been as novel as distasteful. "Are you satisfied with your trial?" said the soldier at length. "Yes," returned Mauville, as if breaking from a reverie.
The abrupt departure of the chariot was the cue for the property wagon, which followed with some labor and jolting, like a convoy struggling in the wake of a pretentious ship. From the door Mauville watched it until it reached a toll-gate, passed beneath the portcullis and disappeared into the broad province of the wilderness.
Shortly after the Count had landed at Pondicherry, Mauville, who was a girl, died, in a condition which showed that chastity had not been the divinity to whom she had chiefly sacrificed. In her trunk were found several trinkets belonging to her master, which she honestly had appropriated to herself.
But if his body was now inert, his mind was active. His thoughts dwelt upon the soldier's reticence, his disinclination to make acquaintances, and the coldness with which he had received his, Mauville's, advances in the Shadengo Valley. Why, asked Mauville, lying there and putting the pieces of the tale together, did not Saint-Prosper remain with his new-found friends, the enemies of his country?
His watchfulness did not relax nor his success desert him, until Mauville finally threw down the cards in disgust, weary alike of such poor luck and the half-nodding automaton confronting him; whereupon the count thrust every piece of gold carefully away in his pocket, absently reached for his hat, drawled a perfunctory farewell and departed in a brown study.
"It was not accident my being in the cemetery, Miss Carew," said Mauville, suddenly covering her with his glance. Meeting her look of surprise unflinchingly, he continued: "I followed you there; through the streets, into the country! My seeing you first was chance; my presence in the burial ground the result of that chance. The inevitable result!" he repeated softly. "As inevitable as life!
Mauville slowly ascended the dark stairs and reached his retreat, a small apartment, with furniture of cane-work and floor covered with sea-grass; the ceiling low and the windows narrow, opening upon a miniature balcony that offered space for one and no more. "Is dat yo', honey?" said an adoring voice on the landing.
Arising deliberately, his body, like a machine, obeying automatically some unconscious power, he confronted the officer, who recognized in him, despite his thin, worn face and eyes, unnaturally bright, the once pretentious land baron, Edward Mauville.
Love follies," he repeated, and, as a new train of fancy was awakened, he regarded Saint-Prosper venomously. "Do you know she is the daughter of a marquis?" said Mauville, suddenly. "Who?" asked the soldier. "The stroller, of course. You can never win her," he added, contemptuously. "She knows all about that African affair."
We're making up a few bets on the horses to-morrow. Colonel Ogelby will ride Dolly D, and I'm to ride my Gladiator. It'll be a gentlemen's race." "Aren't we gentlemen?" growled a professional turfsman. "Gad! it's the first time I ever heard a jockey pretend to be one!" chuckled the first speaker. "What do you say, Mauville?"
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