“It is I, Oliver—it is Lucy.”
The wounded man moved slightly and the girl bending over him caught the words, whispered brokenly to himself:
“I am dreaming.”
But he was not dreaming.
Lucy Drayton's devotion probably brought him back from death and saved his life.
In the hell of that hospital one man at least found the balm for his wounds. When he knew how broken he was he offered Lucy her release. Her reply was in the words of the English girl to the wounded Napier, “If there is enough of you left to hold your soul, I will marry you.”
As soon as he was sufficiently convalescent, they were married.
Lucy insisted that General Hampden should be informed, but the young man knew his father's bitterness, and refused. He relied on securing his consent later, and Lucy, fearing for her patient's life, and having secured her own father's consent, yielded.
It was a mistake.
Oliver Hampden misjudged the depth of his father's feeling, and General Hampden was mortally offended by his having married without informing him.