She came toward him with the silent, sweeping grace that gave her the carriage of an empress; her voice fell on his ear with the accent of a woman immeasurably proud, but too proud not to bend softly and graciously to those who were so far beneath her that, without such aid from her, they could never have addressed or have approached her.
"You have come, I trust, to withdraw your prohibition?
Nothing will give me greater pleasure than to bring his Majesty's notice to one of the best soldiers his Army holds." There was that in the words, gently as they were spoken, that recalled him suddenly to himself; they had that negligent, courteous pity she would have shown to some colon begging at her gates! He forgot--forgot utterly--that he was only an African trooper.

He only remembered that he had once been a gentleman, that--if a life of honor and of self-negation can make any so--he was one still.

He advanced and bowed with the old serene elegance that his bow had once been famed for; and she, well used to be even overcritical in such trifles, thought, "That man has once lived in courts!" "Pardon me, madame, I do not come to trespass so far upon your benignity," he answered, as he bent before her.

"I come to express, rather, my regret that you should have made one single error." "Error!"-- a haughty surprise glanced from her eyes as they swept over him.

Such a word had never been used to her in the whole course of her brilliant and pampered life of sovereignty and indulgence.
"One common enough, madame, in your Order.