Talking gaily, as girls will talk after a ball, criticising costumes and partners, and comparing notes, Mary, Ellinor, and Mrs. Deroubigne reached home when day was beginning to dawn, and the blue waters of the Elbe were beginning to brighten. Ellinor, teasing and quizzing Mary about the baron, had been singing to her—
'Ilka lassie has her laddie,
But ne'er a one have I;'
and Mary, in hot haste, anxious to see the very latest news, threw open a London paper which had come over night, but, as she eagerly scanned it, a cry of dismay escaped her as she read a brief telegram:
'Terrible disaster to the 10th Hussars.—A whole squadron drowned in the Cabul River, and two officers, when attempting to save the life of Corporal Wodrow.'
The hearts of the sisters stood still as they read and re-read this startling notice.
The attempt to save Robert Wodrow had evidently been a failure—so he was gone!
Who had made the attempt and perished with him? Mary's agitated mind at once suggested Colville. Both girls felt completely stunned.
The returning and growing love—a love blended with great pity—that had been developing itself in Ellinor's heart for poor Robert Wodrow was now absorbed and swallowed up in a gush of bitterness and intense remorse at being the cause of his sorrowful and untimely fate.
How true it is that 'suffering is our most faithful friend; it is always returning. Often has it changed its dress, and even its face; but we can easily recognise it by its cordial and intimate embrace.'
And how was it, then, at the old ivy-clad manse of Kirktown-Mailler, where the same terrible telegram had gone like the dart of death?