His cheerful chatter amused and relieved the tension of her mind.

“I shall be sure to come across Du Meresq,” he observed, with simple directness.  “I shall tell him I saw you the last thing.  How glad he will be to hear of any one at home!  Have you any message, Miss Rolleston?” looking straight in her face, which was glowing as he spoke.

“Tell him,” said Cecil, who liked Jack, and trusted him more than any one, “to be sure and write very often to his sister, who is dreadfully anxious, as, indeed, we all are.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” cried Vavasour; “but is that all?  Let me give him that glove,” which Cecil had been absently pulling off and on.

“Certainly-not!” flaming up in a moment.  “Give it to me back directly, Mr. Vavasour!”

Jack thought she was offended.  “I didn’t mean to be impertinent, Miss Rolleston.  You know this is not like an ordinary occasion; and I am sure I didn’t think there would be much in it.”

“I know, I know.  But don’t invent anything from me to Bertie Du Meresq.”  Then, with a softer manner, and most cordial squeeze of the hand as she saw the other men rising to go,—­“Good-bye, and come back safe, you dear, true-hearted boy!”

Next day the mystery came out.  She had been qualifying as a hospital nurse, with the view of joining Miss Nightingale’s staff at Scutari.

Cecil had quite anticipated the antagonism and ridicule with which this announcement would assuredly be met.  A craze to go out to the East possessed many romantic young ladies of the period, too adventurous to be satisfied with merely knitting socks and comforters for their frost-bitten heroes.  Colonel Rolleston had frequently expressed a profound contempt for this mania, refusing to perceive any more exalted motive for it than a desire to follow their partners.  So his horror may be imagined when his own daughter, whom he had always credited with a certain amount of sense, thus enrolled herself in the ranks of these fair enthusiasts.

Cecil allowed the first torrent of words to expend itself, but, in reply to the contemptuous query of “What earthly use could she be?” reiterated the fact of her having received a certificate of competency from the hospital, and adding, that as five of the sisterhood were shortly to be taken out to Scutari, it would be easy for her to accompany them as a volunteer.  Then, evading further discussion by leaving the room, she calmly left the idea to work.

It was not certainly innate love of the occupation that had made Cecil so diligent an attendant of the accident ward.  At first she shuddered and faltered at the simplest operation in which her assistance was called for, but it was essential to test her own nerve before dressing gun-shot wounds, besides which, a certificate from the hospital would much facilitate her chance of being taken out to Scutari.  And, moreover, she was desperately unhappy, and rushed into anything to escape from herself.