Very quietly Carol went to the back of his aunt's chair, and slipping an arm around her neck whispered softly in her ear:
"It's all right, Auntie. I knew that Love would find a way, but I didn't think it would be quite so soon, and such a beautiful way. It is all in Father's letter."
Mrs. Mandeville had laid her letters down unread. She could not disappoint the children, who loved her to breakfast with them, by taking them to her own room, and she wanted to be alone when she read them. As soon as breakfast was over, she left the school-room. An hour later Carol received a message that she wanted him to go to her.
"You have been crying, Auntie," he said, as he entered the room.
"Yes, dear, this letter from your father, and my dear brother, has been a joy and a sorrow to me, bringing back so vividly the remembrance of him. You will like to read it."
She gave the letter to Carol, and he at once sat down beside her, and read it.
"My dear Alicia,
"The fiat has gone forth! They give me neither weeks nor days: a few hours only. The sea has been very rough the past three days. A partly healed wound has reopened: the hemorrhage is internal. They cannot stop it. I think of you and my boy, and that Science which stanched his running wounds, and I wish I knew something of it. I put it off, like one of old, to a more convenient season. The little book you gave me I left with some poor fellows in the hospital, intending to get another copy when I reached England.
"Much of what you told me comes back, but it is not enough. I cannot realize it sufficiently. I have absolute faith that if I could reach England, or even cable to you, the verdict would be reversed. Ah, well! a greater man than I is supposed to have said:
'A day less or more, at sea or ashore,
We die, does it matter when?'