“How have you passed the night, Mrs. Irwin? It appears to me as if all that I have gone through since my return to Lahore has only been a dream.”
With a painful quiver of the lips she shook her head.
“Unfortunately, there is no room for doubt that it has been hideous reality. Poor, poor Mrs. Baird! One must almost consider it a happy dispensation of Providence that her husband did not live to see the terrible fate of his family.”
“What, have you news from the field of battle? Do you then know that the Colonel is dead?”
Edith nodded.
“The Colonel is dead; my husband is dead; Captain McGregor, and many of my friends from Chanidigot, have been left on the field.”
She said it calmly; but he read in her eyes the deep sadness of her soul.
Much affected by her heroic strength of character, he bent his head and kissed her hand. She let him have his way for a moment, but then withdrew her thin, cool fingers with a beseeching look, the meaning of which he full well understood.
“The Commander-in-Chief and his staff reached the railway station,” she continued; “they travelled to Delhi with the last train that left Lahore, just at the eleventh hour; for immediately afterwards the Russians entered the town. The wreck of the army is now marching to Delhi, but their pursuers are close at their heels. God alone knows what will be the fate of our poor defeated army.”
He did not ask her where she had obtained all this information; but that it was quite correct he was firmly convinced, judging by his own experience. He did not know what to say to her to encourage her, he who never had been able to toy with empty phrases. A short while they remained silent, and their eyes simultaneously fell upon the sunlit marble tomb before them.