“That is too absurd, Cecil.  All Hussar uniforms are more or less alike, and you must have seen many.  It is this dreadful idea of going to Scutari that has filled your mind with horrors, and hospital work here has been too much for you, and told on your nerves.”

But Cecil sat unheeding, as if turned to stone, with such a grey look of despair on her face, that Mrs. Rolleston longed to rouse her in any way.

“Forgive me, Cecil,” she cried; “you do care for poor Bertie, I see.”

She looked up with a vague, uncomprehending glance.

“Who was so brilliant—­who so brave—­with that sympathetic voice, and warm, endearing manner?  He was wicked, I dare say!—­he was not cold enough for a saint.”

Mrs. Rolleston listened painfully.

“How every one adored him!” pursued Cecil.  “I don’t mean women—­of course they did:  but all his friends would have done anything for him.  I have seen his letters; and who could touch him in countenance, manner, grace?  And such a poetic, original mind!  But he cared for me most,—­he must, don’t you think?” (looking up with dry, tearless eyes), “or he would not have come to me to-night.”

“Then why, oh, why, Cecil, did you give him up?”

Her brow contracted for an instant.  “I could not bear my sun to shine on any one else,” she cried, passionately “I grudged every glance of his eye, every tone of his voice given to another.”

“Then, Bluebell was the cause—­” began Mrs. Rolleston.

“‘My eyes were blinded;’ he cared no more for her than the rest.  Had I believed him, we might have been happy five months, for we should have married the day I came of age.”

“It will happen yet!” cried Mrs. Rolleston.  “Shake off this fearful dream, my dearest child.  I know that Bertie cares only for you.”

“We have met to-night, we never shall again.”

“She will have a brain-fever,” thought Mrs. Rolleston, distractedly, “if tears do not come to her relief.”  They did eventually, convulsively and exhaustingly, till she dropped into a death-like sleep far into the next morning.

The sun had been shining for hours.  Mrs. Rolleston did not disturb her, but the superstitious terror she had battled against the night before returned daring that long day, in an agony of impatience for news.

But no submarine telegraph then existing, nothing was heard for a time.  Mrs. Rolleston might have shaken off the gruesome impression, but for the immovable conviction of Bertie’s death that actuated Cecil.  She assumed the deepest mourning, and passed whole hours alone with her grief, perfectly indifferent to the opinion of any one.  Indeed, since his spiritual presence had, as she believed, appeared to her, he seemed nearer than before, when they were parted and unreconciled.