: A Soldier of the Legion by Williamson A M Alice Muriel Williamson C N Charles Norris - Africa Fiction; Adventure stories; Man-woman relationships Fiction; France. Armée. Légion étrangère Fiction

@FreeBooksTue 06 Jun, 2023

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feeling at least fifteen years younger than her age.

"Please, don't," the little whining voice under the veil fretfully cut him short. "I can't see very well. Has the doctor gone out?"

"Yes, dearest. We're alone."

"I'm glad. There isn't much time, and I've got a story to tell you. I ought to call it a confession."

"You don't know what you are talking about." The veiled voice grew shrill. "You only do harm trying to stop me. You'll kill me if you do."

"Then don't--don't! I want to go on--to the end. I'd rather you sat down. I can see you standing there. It's like a black shadow between me and the light, accusing--no, don't speak! It needn't accuse. You wouldn't have had the life you've had, if--but I mustn't begin like that. Where are you now? Are you near enough to hear all I say? I can't raise my voice."

"I'm sitting down, close by the bed. I can hear the least whisper," Max assured her. He sat with his head bowed, his hands gripping the arms of the chair. This seemed unbearable, to spend the last minutes of her life hearing some confession! It was not right, from a mother to a son. But he must yield.

She was waiting for him to answer; and he did answer, though it was as if she had thrown him over a precipice, and he were hanging by some branch which would let him crash down in an instant to the bottom of an unknown abyss.

"No, I never guessed." Queer how quiet, how utterly expressionless his voice was! He heard it in faraway surprise.

"You've been told over and over how you were born in France, when Jack and I had the Ch?teau de la Tour, on the Loire. That was true--the one true thing. But you weren't born in the ch?teau. It wasn't for nothing that you learned French almost as easily as you breathed--and Latin, too. I suppose things like that are in people's blood. You are French. If I had left you where you were, you would have grown up Maxime Delatour. Delatour was your real father's name; he came originally of the de la Tours, but his branch of the family had gone down, somehow. Even the name was spelled differently, in the common way. But they lived in the same neighbourhood--that is how it all came about."

She paused, and gave a sigh like a faint moan. But Max was silent. He could spare her nothing. She must go on to the end--if the end were death. For there was somebody else, somewhere, who had to be put in his place--the place he had thought was his.

"It was really because I loved Jack--too much," the veiled woman still fretfully excused herself. "I should have been nobody, except for my looks. He married me for my looks, because I was strong and tall and fine, as a girl should be. He thought I could give him a splendid heir. You know how things are arranged in this family. The property goes from father to son, or a daughter, if there's no son. But they all pray for sons. The Dorans want to carry on the name they're so proud of--just as you have been proud! The wife of a Doran's important only if she's beautiful, or if she has a son. I wanted to be important for both reasons. Oh, how I wanted it!

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