"Supposing I were to say that you must go on now since you have gone so far, Nell?" he said, and felt at the same time the futility of the saying. "I never thought my girl would play so shabby a trick on Gerald's son. You know that people will laugh at Robin?"

"They won't. Robin is not the sort of person to be laughed at--at least, not for long. Besides, if it is any consolation to you, father, I may tell you that it will not hurt Robin much: Robin is not and never has been in love with me."

"What!" The General now was genuinely indignant. He had forgotten for the moment his other perturbation, whatever it might be. "What do you mean, Nell? Your cousin not in love with you! After all the years during which you have been meant for each other! Impossible, Nell! Robin _must_ be in love with you."

"He is not; he never has been. That is my consolation, so far as he is concerned. Father, why did you keep from me the fact that Captain Langrishe was fighting the Wazees? Why did you?"

The General's colour deserted his cheeks once again.

"Poor Langrishe! What was the good of letting you know, Nell? You used to be--interested in the poor fellow."

"You shouldn't have kept it from me. I didn't read the newspapers, or I should have known. Do you know why I didn't read them? Because if I had I must have turned to the army news. I was fighting that as a temptation. I was trying to drive him from my mind. I kept away from his sister, although she had been kind to me; I went nowhere where I might hear his name. Then to-day I met her by accident. I went home with her.

She told me--do you know what she told me?"

"What, Nell?"

"That her brother went away under the impression that I was engaged to Robin Drummond. Aunt Matilda had told her so and she had told him. So that is why he left me."

"I see," the General groaned. "A nice lot of trouble has come out of that scheme of your Aunt Matilda's for marrying you and Robin. I never would agree to it; I used to say: 'Let it be till the children are old enough to choose for themselves.' I wish I had taken a stronger stand. I only wished for your happiness, Nell. I always liked poor Langrishe, and felt I could trust him with even what I held dearest on earth. I did my best for you, Nell. If I kept his danger from you, it was only that I hoped to keep you from suffering like those other poor women."

She did not notice the haggardness of his face, nor the repet.i.tion of "Poor Langrishe." She was too much absorbed in getting to the root of things. She was determined to know everything.

"What happened when you went to Tilbury?"

Was this young inquisitor his Nell?

"I didn't see him. The boat had gone."

"And I thought you had offered me to him, and that he had rejected me!

Oh, I know you would have done it in the most delicate way. There need not have been a word spoken. But it would have been the same thing in the end. I thought his love was not great enough to conquer his pride."

"My train broke down, Nell; I came ten minutes too late. I thought the hand of G.o.d was in it."

"It was a mere accident. G.o.d had nothing to do with it. I am only grateful that it has not ended worse. If I had married Robin and then discovered these things----"

"Don't say that you couldn't have forgiven me, Nell." The General took out a big white silk handkerchief and wiped his forehead with it. "Don't say that you couldn't have forgiven me! I meant it all for the best. My little Nell couldn't be hard with her old father."

She stooped suddenly and caught his hand to her lips. She noticed with a tender contraction of her heart that it was an old hand--knotted, with purple stains.

"I should be a brute if I could be angry with you," she said; and the tenseness of her face relaxed to its old softness.

"Ah, that's right, Nell--that's right. We couldn't do without each other. You've always your old father, you know--haven't you, dearie?--no matter what happens. I'll stand by you, Nell. I'll take you away. No one shall be angry with my Nell."

"You are too good to me," she said. "And I've been angry with you! What a wretch I was to be angry with you! On my way here I telegraphed to Robin to come this evening. I must get it over. You shall take me away if you will afterwards. I would stay and face it if it would do any good, but it wouldn't. After all, there is no great harm done. Robin's heart will not be broken."

"And afterwards, Nell?"

"Afterwards? Oh, you and I shall be together."

"Yes; we did very well when we were together. Listen, Nell." He put his arm about her. "I want you to be strong and brave. I came home to tell you, lest you should hear by accident. His poor sister did not know----"

The General's den looked out on the Square gardens. It was quite a long way across them to the road; yet through the quietness of the golden afternoon there came the shouting of the newsboys. It all flashed on Nelly with a blinding suddenness. To be sure, they had been calling the same thing while she stood with his sister and learned why he had left her, only she had not known.

"He is dead," she said, with an immense quietness. It was as though she had known it always.

"No; not dead, Nell--terribly wounded, but not dead. He is in English hands."

He stopped, shuddering. If he had been in those black devils' hands to be tortured to death! He had been only saved by a sudden rush of his men. Even his wounds would not have saved him from torture if G.o.d had not delivered him out of their hands.

"Show it to me."

All of a sudden she saw the newspaper which had been lying crumpled on his knee. That had contained the news all the time while they had been talking about things that mattered so much less.

He did not try to keep it from her. He turned over the paper and found the page of it which had the latest news. There it was, with its staring headlines. She seemed to have seen it just so, in another life.

She read it through to the end. It had been an ambush. The small detachment of troops had been led by the guide into the midst of a large body of the enemy--it had been surrounded. Captain Langrishe had fallen, as had a young lieutenant. The men had stood shoulder to shoulder, fighting desperately. By the most desperate courage they had rescued the bodies of their officers, which were being carried by the tribesmen into one of their towers among the hills. They had fought their way back with the bodies strapped to their horses. Lieutenant Foley proved to be dead.

He had been hacked and hewed with knives. Captain Langrishe had been more fortunate; the life was still in him when the last intelligence had been sent down. There was very little hope of his recovery.

Nelly neither cried out nor fainted. When she had finished the reading she laid down the paper quietly. Her father watched her in mingled terror and relief. She was seeing it all--the rocky gorge with the inaccessible hills on either side, filled in with scrub and low trees; at the little neck of the gorge the dreadful tower; the small body of Britishers fighting their way step by step backward; the dazzling blue sky over all. Was Heaven empty that such things happened? She remembered in a kind of daze that she had been at a garden-party that very afternoon. She had worn for the first time her white silk frock with the roses on it and she had seen in many eyes how well it became her. That had happened in another world. A great gulf stretched between even the events of the afternoon and this time--this time, in which she knew that G.o.dfrey Langrishe was dead or dying.

"I wish he might have known," she said quietly, "that after all I was not engaged to Robin."

CHAPTER XXIV

THE FRIEND

Robin Drummond had heard from his cousin's own lips his dismissal. Her father would have spared her, but Nelly would not hear of that and he let her have her way.

She told Robin everything in a dull, unmodulated voice, with a dead-tiredness in it which revealed her unhappiness more eloquently than words could have done. She stood by the mantel-shelf, holding one hand over her eyes while she told him. When she had finished there was a momentary silence.

"You are not angry with me?" she asked, turning about and looking at him with eyes of suffering.

"My poor child! Could I have the heart to be angry with you?"

"Ah! that is right. You were always kind, Robin. I shouldn't have liked you to be unkind now. You must win me your mother's forgiveness."

"She will come round in time."

He had an idea his mother would take it badly. But, of course, she would have to come round. The whole bad business had been her fault in a way; and if she was hard on Nelly, he felt like telling her so.

"I am glad to think I have done you no great harm, Robin. Indeed, the harm would have been in marrying you. I have realised for some time that I was not essential to your happiness."

He opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again. He was not a diplomatist.

"I am very fond of you, Nelly," he said, after a pause.