One day, late in the afternoon, Mrs. Rolleston was agitated by that weird sound to anxious ears, the shouting voices of men and boys hawking evening papers, and proclaiming startling news.  She saw from the balcony her servant dart down the street for the gratification of his curiosity.  He bought a paper, and perused it as he slowly returned.  He got “quite a turn,” as he afterwards described it, when his mistress, pale as a sheet, met him at the door, and, without a word, snatched the evening journal from his astonished hands.

No occasion to seek far.  The sensational paragraph was in capital letters, and contained the intelligence of the battle of Balaklava, and famous charge of the six hundred, with its fearful losses.  The cavalry regiments engaged were named.  Among them was Bertie Du Meresq’s, and mentioned as one that had suffered heavily.  The returns of killed and wounded did not appear.

Mrs. Rolleston had a friend at the Horse Guards, and instantly despatched the servant there, with a letter requesting further particulars as early as possible.  Ill news does not lag.  A letter from General—­soon arrived, with its warning black seal.  Captain Du Meresq was among the casualties.  He had been shot through the heart during the charge.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

AN UNEXPECTED RENCONTRE.

Into a ward of the white-washed walls,
Where the dead and the dying lay,
Wounded by bayonets, shells, and balls,
Somebody’s darling was borne one day. 
—­Song.

Mrs. Rolleston completely sank under this dreadful blow.  Bertie had been her darling and pride from his infancy, and her own misery was redoubled, in anticipation of the even greater anguish of Cecil.

Strange to say, though, she experienced no new shock.  That Du Meresq was dead, she had never doubted, or that his spirit, in the moment of departure, had hovered for an instant near the one who loved him best.  It seemed to connect her with that other world whither he had gone.  It did not appear so far away, now Bertie was there, and her thoughts were ever in communion with her spirit love.

The hour in which he had, as she believed, appeared to her, she regularly passed alone in the same room, and even prayed for another sign of his presence.

But if such prayers were answered, what mourners would remain unvisited by their dead?

This room became her “temple and her shrine,” in which Bertie, all his sins forgotten, was canonized.  How incessantly she regretted having parted with those letters, so impulsively affectionate and so entirely confidential!  To be sure, they were chiefly about himself; but what subject could be so interesting to Cecil?  His normal condition of picturesque insolvency was only a proof of generosity of disposition and absence of meanness.  Now she had nothing but a letter not her own, and that one last message, “Give my dearest love to Cecil.”