Within an hour after Linton had left the cemetery, he received a telegram in cipher from Sir Robert Herrick. He gave immediate instructions to Wilton, and sent a message to Zenobia. She came to him at once.
Linton looked at her with troubled eyes. There was something infinitely pathetic in the aspect of this slim, fair girl with the sunny hair, on whose face suffering and distress of spirit suddenly had set so sad a stamp.
"Good-bye," she answered, "God grant that you may both come safely back. When Mr. Renshaw is in England, I must see him, I must tell him all."
With a final pressure of her hand, he turned away. However much his heart might be wrung at leaving her, however hard to keep back the words of love and tenderness that rose to his lips, he must be silent for the moment. There was a task to be performed. It was the hour for action. Great issues were involved. A national crisis was at hand.
That much Linton knew. But as yet he did not know that the crisis was to assume a double and appalling complexity. A thunderbolt had been hurled against England from an unexpected quarter. A swift and staggering blow, well timed in the hour of Jardine's death, had been levelled against the remaining pillars of her once proud Empire.
THE RAID OF THE EAGLES.