“The saddest part of my story must be told now. You may have heard of the recent terrible fighting in the Province of Santa Clara. Well, the news from the battle-field yesterday reported Captain Linwood as mortally wounded.”
CHAPTER XLI.
“AFTER LONG GRIEF AND PAIN.”
“She left her home, she lost her pride,
Forgot the jeering world—ah, me!
And followed a knight who fought and bled
All for the sake of—chivalry.”
Viola did not cry out in despair and faint and fall as they foreboded—she simply bowed her face upon her father’s arm in a silence more terrible and fatal than the wildest grief—the silence of a fond heart breaking in the awful revulsion from hope to despair.
The two men looked at each other in silent sympathy; then the judge said, hopefully:
“Sometimes these reports from the battle-field are exaggerated—sometimes totally false, as in the case of your reported death. Perhaps this may prove a cannard.”