"A braver soldier never swung a leg over saddle; but he was always in
some love affair or another. Why he didn't marry I couldn't make out. I
suppose he could never stick long enough to one woman. However, some four
years ago he got into an affair more serious than any he had been in
before, and this time he stuck to it in right earnest. Of course she was
precisely one of the women he oughtn't to have fallen in love with,
though I for one couldn't blame him, for a prettier creature wasn't to be
found in France. Unfortunately she was the only daughter of the Marquis
de Recambours, one of the wealthiest and most powerful of French nobles,
and there was no more chance of his giving his consent to her throwing
herself away upon a Scottish soldier of fortune than to her going into a
nunnery; less, in fact. However, she was as much in love with Leslie as
he was with her, and so they got secretly married. Two years ago this
child was born, but she managed somehow to keep it from her father, who
was all this time urging her to marry the Duke de Chateaurouge.

"At last, as ill luck would have it, he shut her up in a convent just a
week before she had arranged to fly with Leslie to Germany, where he
intended to take service until her father came round. Leslie would have
got her out somehow; but his regiment was ordered to the frontier, and it
was eighteen months before we returned to Paris, where the child had been
in keeping with some people with whom he had placed it. The very evening
of his return I was cleaning his arms when he rushed into the room.

"'All is discovered,' he said; 'here is my signet ring, go at once and
get the child, and make your way with it to Scotland; take all the money
in the escritoire, quick!'

"I heard feet approaching, and dashed to the bureau, and transferred the