“Well, you’d buy one and see for yourself, so I may as well show it to you; but—but don’t imagine the worst at once.”
She handed her the paper, and pointed to a letter from the seat of war.
In a few—but, alas, how pregnant! words the correspondent told the story of the disaster which had befallen a detachment sent into the interior. Surrounded and outnumbered by the enemy, savages in nothing more than their mode of conducting warfare, the handful of English soldiers had fallen, as so many thousands of their fellows in the glorious years of the past have done, fighting to the last. There were only the few details which can be crammed into a column of newspaper type, but one line stabbed Doris to the heart.
“I am sorry to say that an aide-de-camp, the Marquis of Stoyle, better known as Lord Cecil, accompanied the detachment. Throughout the campaign Lord Cecil has distinguished himself by his bravery and devotion to duty, and by his genial and modest disposition had won the hearts of both officers and men. If, as there is too much reason to fear, his lordship has fallen with his ill-fated comrades, his loss will be sorely felt, and he can never be replaced. It will be remembered that he succeeded to the historic title just twelve months ago, and very shortly before joining the regiment.”
Doris said not a word, but stood staring at the paper, with dry eyes, and that awful feeling of benumbing anguish which crushes pain for a time but to lend it additional force afterward.
Lady Despard put her arm round her.
“Doris, Doris! my dear, my dear!” she murmured. “Don’t give way! While there’s life there’s hope; we can’t tell what may have happened; I have reason to hope, to think——” She stopped and sprang—actually sprang—to the door, and throwing it open, said, hurriedly, “Come in; oh, come in!”
The next moment a tall figure, with a sunburned face and one arm in a sling, entered, and after a glance, one anxious glance, at the white face, rushed forward and caught Doris to him with his sound arm. Lady Despard waited until this happened, then glided out.
They sat up very late that night, and Lady Despard’s boudoir was so dimly lighted that as she reclined on her couch she could not see, or pretended not to see, that Doris, as she sat at the marquis’ feet, had got his hand fast locked in hers, almost as if she dreaded lest he should vanish as suddenly as he had come. And every now and then she, glancing fearfully at Lady Despard, laid the brown hand against her cheeks, and near, very near, to her lips.