'This energetic and distinguished young officer is the bearer of despatches to the Egyptian Colonel commanding a Camel Battery and Black Battalion near Dayer-el-Syrian, which district he certainly had not reached when the latest intelligence came from that somewhat desolate quarter.
'Doubts are now—when too late—entertained as to the fidelity of Hassan Abdullah, his guide. A camel supposed to have been his has been found dead of thirst in the desert, and as there have been some dreadful sand-storms in that district, the greatest fears are entertained at headquarters that Captain Skene has perished in the wilderness—dying in the execution of his duty to his Queen and country, as truly and as bravely as if he had met a soldier's death in battle.'
The paper slipped from Hester's hands, and she sank forward till her forehead rested on the sill of a window near which she sat. She knew this paragraph meant too probably a terrible and unknown death, the harrowing details of which might—nay, too surely, never would—be revealed—death to one who had loved her but too well, and thus all her soul became instinct with a tender and fearful interest in him.
'Poor Malcolm—poor Malcolm Skene!' she murmured again and again, while her face, ashy white, was hidden in her hands.
Few women can fail to take a tender interest in the fate or future of any man who has been interested in them.
For a long time she sat still—nay, still as a statue, but for the regular and slow rising and falling of the ribbons and lace at her bosom, and the ruffling of her dark brown hair in the breeze that came through the open window, kissing her white temples and cooling her eyelids.
Then she recalled her father's strange and weird story of his father's dream, vision, or presentiment, before the storming of Jhansi, where the latter fell; and thought with wonder, could such things be?
She confided the letter and its contents to her bosom friend Maude; but she could not—for cogent reasons—bring herself to say a word on the subject to Roland, whose mind, however, was full enough of the newspaper report of his old friend's misfortune, or as he never doubted now—evil fate!