“Was he a major in the 97th regiment?”
“Did you know him?”
“I knew Major Lockhart; He—of course you know—fell at Waterloo.”
“We know that he was killed there, but we have no particulars,” said Marion, her voice faltering, and her eyes full of painful eagerness.
“And you are Miss Lockhart—the Marion he spoke of?”
“Wait a moment,” she said, in a thick voice, and turning pale. She walked to the window, and pressed her forehead against the glass. Presently she turned round and said, “I will call my mother, sir. She must hear what you have to tell us,” and left the room.
“A strange chance this!” remarked the elder man thoughtfully.
“She’s a fine girl, and looks like her father,” said Lancaster.
In a few moments Marion re-entered with her mother. Mrs. Lockhart looked from one to the other of the two men with wide-open eyes and flushed cheeks: a slight tremor pervaded the hand with which she mechanically smoothed the thick braids of gray hair that covered her graceful head. She moved with an uncertain step to a chair, and said in a voice scarcely audible, “Will you be seated, gentlemen? My daughter tells me that you—one of you—”
“The honor belongs to me, madam,” said Lancaster, with deep respect and with some evidence of emotion, “of having seen your husband the day before his death. He mentioned both of you; he said no man in the army had had so happy a life as he—such a wife and such a daughter. I shall remember other things that he said, by-and-by; but this meeting has come upon me by surprise, and.... The day after the battle I rode out to the field and found him. He had fallen most gallantly—I need not tell you that—at a moment such as all brave soldiers would wish to meet death in. He was wounded through the heart, and must have died instantly. I assumed the privilege of bringing his body to Brussels, and of seeing it buried there.” Here he paused, for both the women were crying, and, in sympathy with them, his own voice was getting husky. The elder man sat with his face downcast, and his hands folded between his knees.