After a time she sat up and began to decipher the rest. It was in French, the _lingua franca_ of Eastern diplomacy. Noble-born, poor, devoted, daring. That was the essence of the credentials. The other paper simply gave the address of the ancestral home and that of two sons in the army. A memorandum as to keys and papers filled up the back of the latter. She replaced them, shut down the spring again, then, remembering she could show no right to the snuff-box for which inquiry was sure to be made, took them out again. Nothing, somehow, seemed to matter now. She had made her mistake, she must suffer.
"You have all you want?" asked Doctor Forsyth, as she handed him the box, and she flushed scarlet. Sometimes he seemed to her too clever--he found out everything, everything!
"Because--well, if you would like to possess it, I could buy it in for you at the auction. The poor old general is--is unidentified, remember."
"Yes, he is unidentified," she assented, remembering her father's wishes, "but I should like to have it all the same."
He brought it to her a day or two after. "That's your fee," he said lightly, "you've earned it well."
And he would take no refusal; so she replaced the papers in the secret compartment and put the box away in her satchel against--what? That future which was now always filling her mind. The present seemed hardly to touch her at all. The doctor looked at her critically more than once, but he said nothing.
Then came Inkerman. It was on the 5th of November--almost three months, Marrion told herself, since that wonderful day when Duke's love had come to her amid flame and fire.
It had been a disturbed night. A noise as of tumbrils had been heard about the city. Was it possible that the enemy was taking advantage of the dense night fog to run in commissariat or even ammunition? Nothing could be done, however, save wait. So as the laggard day broke, the advanced pickets looked keenly ahead. To no purpose. An impenetrable wall of grey mist shut out all beyond a yard or two. Their very comrades looked like shadows of men.
"London partickler," remarked one sentry, stamping his feet to keep out the chill, for it had been raining all night.
"Not yeller enough, save down Chelsea way. My Gawd! I wish I was ther," replied the next.