A Gentleman from Gascony: A Romance of the Huguenots — page 182: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

£78 A GENTLEMAN FROM GASCONY, stood one of them. He could have seen her in the moonlight had he chanced to turn his eyes in that direction. Still, in the yellow-haired buxom country girl, who, with basket on her arm, was coquetting with the senti- nel, the chevalier would scarcely have recognized the lithe, brown-skinned Tzigana. And yet Mirza was there, led by that gratitude which in people of her blood amounts to an absolute passion. Her dark hair covered by a flaxen wig, her complex- ion skilfully whitened and her slender figure padded to somewhat robust proportions, she looked to perfection the part she was playing—that of a simple peasant girl who had come to Paris to dispose of the products of her little farm. And, with nerves strung to the utmost tension, know- ing that the stake was the life of the man who had befriended her in her hour of need, she was playing her part as well as she looked it. Certainly Griffo, the soldier on guard, had no sus- picion that he had ever before seen her face, and noth- ing was further from his thoughts than connecting her with that wild-bird, Mirza. Leaning carelessly against the parapet, with his ar- quebuse between his knees, he was by no means averse to whiling away a few minutes of his watch by making love to the innocent-appearing country girl, who, by her own story, had wandered = ft on the platform in search of her brother. “Lost your brother!” said Griffo, good-humoredly, in his not unmusical Italian accent. “ By hilt and point! as the sergeant says, if a pretty face counts for anything, your brother’s far-more likely to lose you.” Comicbhoo S) ((@)