“Awfully sorry to trouble you about this sort of thing just now,” said Woodworth awkwardly.
“Trouble? I am delighted they should help, of course. Where shall I find my husband?”
“Good heavens! You haven’t heard——?” The adjutant stopped suddenly.
“You blighted idiot!” muttered Fitz under his breath. “Fact is, Mrs North, the Major’s hurt—rather badly—” this reluctantly; “but I didn’t want to frighten you sooner than I could help——”
“Where is he? Take me to him at once,” was all she said.
Woodworth stepped forward mechanically to help her out of the cart, but found himself forestalled. The Commissioner had come hurrying up, preceded by two huge Sikhs, who cleared a passage for him through the throng, and now, supporting himself upon his crutch, he held out his hand to Georgia.
“Believe me, Mrs North,” he said, “you have the sympathy of every man here at this terrible time. Surely it must be some consolation to you that your noble husband fell fighting, as he would have wished, and that the smallness of our losses is entirely owing to his prudence and self-sacrifice?”
Georgia, on the ground now, looked about her like one dazed, finding, wherever she looked, fresh confirmation of the cruel tidings. In Mr Burgrave’s sympathising face, in Woodworth’s pitying eyes, in the sorrowful glances of the stern troopers who had closed up round the group, she read the truth of what she had just heard. Her hand went quickly from her heart to her eyes, as though to shut out the sight. Then it dropped again.
“Oh, you might have told me at once!” she cried bitterly to Fitz. “I could have borne it better from you than from the man who has done it all.”
“When you are more yourself, Mrs North, I know you will regret this injustice,” said Mr Burgrave, without anger. “Allow me to take you to your quarters in the fort.”