She recalled her strong but daily presentiment that something was about to happen, though now the war in Egypt was virtually over, and that terrible something had happened at last.
Could the telegram have been a mistake? Improbable and impossible! Though brief, it seemed too distinct in its grim details.
She felt as if suffocating with grief, and her brain reeled at the feeble prospect of concealing it from the already exasperated Sir Paget.
She recalled Evan's words when he parted with her at Maviswood, and how prophetic they seemed now,
'I am going far away, my darling, and shall never see you again. That I may find a grave in Egypt is the kindest wish you can have for me.'
And now he had found that grave, and he was buried by the hands of her brother Allan, not on the sunny slope of a dear highland hill, or in the grassy glen where his forefathers lay in Stratherroch, within sound of the waves of Lochiel, where the summer breezes and the summer birds would be about his tomb, and the clouds and shadows of a Scottish sky flit over it, but in the desolate sand of cruel and barren Egypt!
There had been no solemn ceremony by his grave; he had not even a coffin, perhaps, but was buried, as she had read of others being buried, in a blanket only, and there to lie in the wilderness, traversed by the antelope and jackal, till the last trumpet sounded.
She remembered his song at Dundargue. Could it be that the manly and bright young face, the love-lit eyes, were dulled by death now, and that his fresh gay voice was hushed for ever?
'Dead!' wailed the girl in her heart. 'Oh, God, that he might be raised up as Lazarus was, even though we should never, never cross each other's paths again. My love--oh, my love!' she murmured, in a hushed voice, as if the walls might hear her.
'Only to the dead,' says the author of 'Mount Royal,' 'to the utterly lost and gone, is given this supreme passion--love sublimated to despair. From the living there is always something kept back, something saved and garnered for an after-gift, some reserve in the mind or heart of the giver; but to the dead, love gives all--with a wild self-abandonment which knows no restraint or measure.'
She had felt at first a dull, vague, sensation which became an acute pang when certainty came upon her; but she dared not as yet shed a tear.