CHAPTER V.
DEAD AND BURIED IN THE SAND.
How she acquitted herself as hostess, how she got through that dinner, with its many entrées and courses, from the soup to the fruit, she never knew. It passed like a phantasmagoria—a dreadful dream—but it was over at last; and, as one in a dream, while Sir Harry held open the door for her, she passed from the table, not to the drawing-room, as he naturally thought, and where he meant speedily to join her, but swiftly to rush to her dressing-closet, to tear off her ornaments, and fling herself despairingly upon a couch.
She recalled her strong but daily presentiment that something was about to happen, though now the war in Egypt was virtually over, and that terrible something had happened at last.
Could the telegram have been a mistake? Improbable and impossible! Though brief, it seemed too distinct in its grim details.
She felt as if suffocating with grief, and her brain reeled at the feeble prospect of concealing it from the already exasperated Sir Paget.
She recalled Evan's words when he parted with her at Maviswood, and how prophetic they seemed now,
'I am going far away, my darling, and shall never see you again. That I may find a grave in Egypt is the kindest wish you can have for me.'
And now he had found that grave, and he was buried by the hands of her brother Allan, not on the sunny slope of a dear highland hill, or in the grassy glen where his forefathers lay in Stratherroch, within sound of the waves of Lochiel, where the summer breezes and the summer birds would be about his tomb, and the clouds and shadows of a Scottish sky flit over it, but in the desolate sand of cruel and barren Egypt!
There had been no solemn ceremony by his grave; he had not even a coffin, perhaps, but was buried, as she had read of others being buried, in a blanket only, and there to lie in the wilderness, traversed by the antelope and jackal, till the last trumpet sounded.
She remembered his song at Dundargue. Could it be that the manly and bright young face, the love-lit eyes, were dulled by death now, and that his fresh gay voice was hushed for ever?