He was but a French soldier, who went on sufferance into the presence of a great lady.

All the rest was dead and buried.
Some half dozen apartments, large and small, were crossed; then into that presence he was ushered.

The room was deeply shaded, and fragrant with the odors of the innumerable flowers of the Sahel soil; there was that about it which struck on him as some air--long unheard, but once intimately familiar--on the ear will revive innumerable memories.

She was at some distance from him, with the trailing draperies of eastern fabrics falling about her in a rich, unbroken, shadowy cloud of melting color, through which, here and there, broke threads of gold; involuntarily he paused on the threshold, looking at her.

Some faint, far-off remembrance stirred in him, but deep down in the closed grave of his past; some vague, intangible association of forgotten days, forgotten thoughts, drifted before him as it had drifted before him when first in the Chambree of his barracks he had beheld Venetia Corona.
She moved forward as her servant announced him; she saw him pause there like one spell-bound, and thought it the hesitation of one who felt sensitively his own low grade in life.