What does it matter? But
they heard of me, those Prussian dogs. They knew and could not forgive.
How often did they come over to bomb us, Val, dear?"
"Oh, many, many times," said the girl, shudderingly.
"And at last they succeeded," added Madame, bitterly. "God! the black
villains! Let me not think of it."
She clenched her hands and closed her eyes entirely, but presently
resumed again:
"If they had killed me I should have been glad, but they only made of
me a cripple. M. de Staemer had been killed a few weeks before this. I
am sorry I forgot to mention it. I was a widow. And when after this
catastrophe I could be moved, I went to a little villa belonging to my
husband at Nice, to gain strength, and this child came with me, like a
ray of sunshine.
"Here, to wake the fire in my heart, came Juan, deserted, broken,
wounded in soul, but most of all in pride, in that evil pride which
belongs to his race, which is so different from the pride of France,
but for which all the same I could never hate him.
"Ysola de Valera had run away from his great house in Cuba. Yes! A
woman had dared to leave him, the man who had left so many women.
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