"It is Bryan," Frank then exclaimed without waiting to be asked. "I had word from the War Office today that he had been mortally wounded."

He put his arm about Jack to support her if she should turn faint, but this was not the way Jack received bad news.

She stopped for a moment, standing straight, however, with her head up and her shoulders braced.

"Are you sure, Frank, there can be no mistake?" she asked slowly.

Lord Kent shook his head.

"I am afraid not, dear. Bryan was leading a charge out of his trench when a sh.e.l.l hit him. His own men carried him back to a field hospital."

[Ill.u.s.tration: HIS OWN MEN CARRIED HIM BACK TO A FIELD HOSPITAL]

Jack and Frank then walked slowly on between the winter fields. The gra.s.s was still green as it remains almost all the year round in England, but the trees were stripped and bare, and there were no birds in sight, except a few melancholy crows, which in England are called rooks.

Jack was recalling the day when she and Captain MacDonnell had taken their last ride together; also the smell of the blossoming hedges and her baby's blue ribbon on his sleeve.

Since coming to England as a bride, she and Frank and Bryan had enjoyed a charming friendship. It was to Bryan, Frank had first introduced her, asking that he help to make her less homesick for the ranch and her own people.

In those days Frank's sisters were still unmarried and Bryan had been in the habit of spending much of his time at Kent House when he was on leave.

Yet Frank and Bryan were so utterly unlike in temperament. To say that Frank was an Englishman and Bryan an Irishman explains a great deal.

Frank was quieter and more reserved and determined; but Bryan was ardent and emotional, quick to feel an emotion and quick to change. Jack had always felt that he loved the outdoors as she did, while Frank was studious, more devoted to books and to political questions than to swift action.

At the same time Frank and his wife were thinking along similar lines, although his recollection of his friend went further back than hers. He remembered the small boy, whose mother had just died, coming to live with his old bachelor guardian in the queer little house which had since belonged to him. He also remembered how shy he had been and yet how often he had gotten into fights with other boys. But, more than anything, he recalled how Bryan had always seemed to long for the companionship of women and how happy he had been to come to Kent House and spend hours and days with his mother and sisters. This was one of the reasons why it had always seemed strange to Frank that his friend had never married.

"But the news only said that Bryan was fatally hurt--not that things were over?" Jack asked after their long pause.

"Yes; but I'm afraid he may be by now," Frank answered. "I have sent half a dozen cables for more news."

Jack's grey eyes cleared a little.

"Then I won't believe the worst until it really happens."

On their arrival at home Olive and Frieda were sympathetic, but naturally could not care as much as Jack and Frank, since Captain MacDonnell was to them only a comparatively new acquaintance.

But all evening Frieda watched her sister closely, whenever she had the opportunity without being observed. Only a few times before had she seen her with the same expression.

Half a dozen or more of the neighbors came in after dinner to ask for further information concerning Captain MacDonnell, having heard the news only indirectly.

But among them all Jack was the only one who appeared hopeful. She outwardly showed the effect of the anxiety and grief over their friend far less than Frank. But Frieda at least realized that courage was her sister's strongest characteristic.

There had always been something gallant about Jack from the time she was a little girl--the carriage of her head; the look in her eyes--everything about her revealed this.

And tonight Frieda appreciated the fact more clearly than any one else.

There was no friend in the world so loyal as Jack; and no one more anxious to help those for whom she cared. Frieda knew that whatever else she might say during the evening, she was in reality thinking only of her husband's friend and her own, alone and dying, perhaps with no one near him for whom he cared.

As early as possible Jack and Frank went upstairs together, since Frank showed the effect of the strain by being uncommonly tired.

They had gone into their own rooms and Jack was slowly beginning to undress when an idea came to her; and she went at once into her husband's room.

Frank, she found sitting on the side of his bed.

"Bryan's letter, Frank," Jack remarked quickly. "Don't you think you ought to open it? He said that if anything happened to him you were to read it first, and afterwards I was to see the letter if you thought best. I remember he seemed much in earnest when he gave it to me."

Frank frowned, and then shook his head.

"Do you know I had forgotten, Jack? But I don't think Bryan meant us to disturb the letter until we know that the worst has happened to him and we don't know this yet; we only fear it."

For a moment Jack was silent, but when she spoke again her voice and manner expressed a quiet firmness.

"I think you are mistaken, Frank. There must be something in Bryan's letter that he wants us to do for him. It may be something that would come afterwards, but it also may be something that we could do for him now. Of course you must judge, but this is the way I feel about it."

Jack, who had put on a deep violet toned velvet dressing gown over her underclothes, now sat down in an arm chair, leaning thoughtfully forward and resting her chin in the palm of her hand.

She did not intend to influence her husband; but having expressed her own thought, she quietly awaited his decision.

Frank, however, was worried and undecided. In order to think more clearly, he got up and began walking nervously up and down his room.

"I don't know what to do, Jack," he argued. "If Bryan still lives he may, of course, recover and I would not then like to feel that I have pryed into his secret. On the other hand, you may be right and Bryan may have made some simple request of us which we could carry out for him at once. Bryan is a sentimental chap always. I wish, this time, he had been more explicit."

Nevertheless, Frank must have finally decided to accept his wife's point of view for, after another few moments, he walked over to a small safe which occupied a corner in his room and opened it. Then he took out the box in which he had placed Captain MacDonnell's letter and the next instant had broken the seal and was reading its contents.

Jack sat watching her husband's face, but offered no interruption.

She saw Frank first look surprised and then saw him flush and at last his expression hardened curiously. He then presented her with the letter.

"Read this, Jack. It is just as well that you should know what is in it.

Bryan must have been considerably upset over his farewells and the thought of what might lie ahead of him, or he would never have made such a request of us. He must have realized afterwards that the thing is impossible."

Jack read the letter, but there was nothing in it which seemed strange; certainly nothing impossible to her point of view. Bryan had simply requested that Frank allow her to come to him in case he was seriously injured. Bryan explained simply and boyishly that he had no women in his own family and that she was his closest woman friend. He had an absurd horror of dying with no woman near for whom he cared, or who cared for him.

"I don't see what you find impossible, Frank," Jack answered, placing the letter inside the envelope and quickly returning it. "I was only waiting until we heard more news to ask you to let me go to Bryan, even if he had not made this request of us."

Frank appeared distressed, but shook his head resolutely.

"I don't want to seem unkind, dear. In a way it is pretty hard to refuse what Bryan asks. Only he could not have appreciated just how much he was asking."

Jack brushed her hair back from her forehead with a puzzled gesture.

"I don't understand what you mean, Frank. Certainly neither of us can dream of not agreeing. I know you will worry over the discomfort, perhaps even the danger of the trip to France for me. But hundreds of women have gone and are going every day to care for the soldiers who are entire strangers to them. Many times I have wanted to go myself before this, except for leaving you and my babies behind. But now I may only need to stay a little time."

"We won't discuss the matter any further please, Jack," Frank protested, speaking gently, but with a decision which Jack recognized as having a serious intention back of it.

Instantly she went to him and put her hands on his shoulders, looking directly into his blue eyes with her clear, wide grey ones.

"Tell me your reason please, Frank. This isn't like you. You can't mean to be so selfish--even so cruel."