"I left Maggie—I came ahead—I overheard—" she began disjointedly, "Robert—the cholera—Robert—?" and then as neither of the men spoke, she cried, "Oh, sir, indeed it may be a mistake—sometimes, you know the names—"
Trevelyan’s father looked down at the girl, and into her eyes full of unshed tears, and on the small white hand on his arm he placed his own—the one that had held the sabre at Inkerman. It was an old hand, thin and vividly veined, and it trembled.
"The report was signed by Mackenzie," said Stewart at last.
"There is some mistake—there _must_ be—the letters—" cried Cary.
"We will have to wait for the letters, child." Trevelyan’s father turned away.
"It was at the India Office yesterday—the Secretary—after all—" he broke off.
She looked from one to the other, but she still stood by Trevelyan’s father. Suddenly she sat down in the high backed chair he had occupied, clinging to his hand, her eyes on his face. Stewart went back to the window.
Trevelyan’s father looked down at her again and his face twitched.
"He was always a brave laddie," he said, and his face was wet with tears.
Cary raised the hand she was holding and pressed it to her cheek, and she held it there—brown and thin and heavily veined—against the delicate texture, and caressed it in the way that women have.
"He was a great soul. I always knew it! I—always—knew—it—" she told them brokenly.
"He was a Briton," said the old officer of the Empire. "I didn’t always understand him—I blamed him for doing an orderly’s work. I’m proud of him—but if it had been anything but the cholera—I saw it once myself in Bombay; I ran away from it—" he raised his head, "anything but _that_! But—I’m proud of him!"
Stewart still stood by the oriel window leaning against his arm flung over his head, and he was crying—hardly and bitterly as a man cries. The stillness of the outside world increased. The sun crept into the corner of the room.
"I can’t quite take it in—" said the old man slowly, looking past the girl to a far-off field of thistle and staring at the purplish bloom. "It’s hard to think of Robert—gone!"
"I can’t think of the rest—the details—" he clenched his hands fiercely, "the pain—the thirst—" and his eyes came back to Cary. "There! There! There’s something about it all that we can’t understand, I fancy, but there is the honor—that thing which does not perish with the using!"