With that he went back to the house, the paper still in his hand. But the next day, when she went, she found him pacing the place like a wounded tiger. The servants told her he had been very quiet all the morning and the previous evening, and had told them all several times about the fine thing his son had done. But Barnes had brought in the day's papers an hour ago, and he had been raging like this ever since. The girl found him with bloodshot eyes and clenched hands, walking the big verandahs.
'Go away!' he shouted when he saw her. She turned and went into the house at once, to wait the passing of the mood. She stood at the window of one of the handsome rooms, and looked with dreary eyes out to the twin hill that lay bathed in the clear sunshine half a mile away, and never knew how often Mortimer had sat at that same window, smoking his after-dinner pipe, and building his sunny cottage for her on the bright hill-top.
Presently the old man came in to her.
'Take the paper from me,' he said quaveringly, and held it out to her. 'If I read it any more, I'll lose me reason!'
The girl looked startled.
'I didn't know there was anything new to-day,' she said. 'Bart told me he had lost our paper on the way.' Her eyes, large with fear and grief, tore through the cables they had kept back from her at the selection.
'Private Stevenson,' said a paragraph, 'did not die instantaneously. He was shot through the jaw and through one lung, and dragged himself to a rock, leaving a long trail of blood behind. He must have lingered in frightful agony all night, for when his body was picked up by the ambulance, it was found that he had written the word "Cold" on the ground with his finger.'
'Dear God, how can they do this?' Mrs. Cameron had cried, when she saw the paragraph. 'Have they no sense of pity or decency, that they print these frightful details? This is more terrible a thousandfold for those who loved him than the plain news that he was dead.'
The poor little girl, who had gone up so resolved to be calm and brave, screamed out uncontrollably at the cruel news, then buried her head in her hands to keep the moans back.
The old man brought her a glass of water from the sideboard.