The colonel! I remembered she was none other than the Baroness de
Ferre; and thinking of her and of the grateful feeling of the
sheets of soft linen, I fell asleep.




VIII

The doctor came that night, and took out of my back a piece of
flattened lead. It had gone under the flesh, quite half round my
body, next to the ribs, without doing worse than to rake the bone
here and there and weaken me with a loss of blood. I woke awhile
before he came. The baroness and the fat butler were sitting
beside me. She was a big, stout woman of some forty years, with
dark hair and gray eyes, and teeth of remarkable whiteness and
symmetry. That evening, I remember, she was in full dress.

"My poor boy!" said she, in English and in a sympathetic tone, as
she bent over me.

Indeed, my own mother could not have been kinder than that good
woman. She was one that had a heart and a hand for the sick-room.
I told her how I had been hurt and of my ride. She heard me
through with a glow in her eyes.

"What a story!" said she. "What a daredevil! I do not see how it
has been possible for you to live."