Whether or no the vision was really but a dream, we leave to the decision of our readers.  It was not unnatural that the dominant idea should impress that unreasoning moment between sleeping and waking; but Cecil’s fervent faith knew no doubts, and thus it was that Du Meresq dead influenced her as much as when living.

They soon heard from Colonel Rolleston.  Part of his regiment had been sent to seek and bring in the wounded; his brother-in-law’s body had been found and brought back by Vavasour, and he sent his wife Bertie’s watch.  The newspapers were full of the disastrous but glorious charge of the cavalry, and of their immense loss.

In Du Meresq’s regiment all the senior had been cut off.  Had he lived, he would have been Colonel of it, a position which Lascelles survived to fill.

There appeared no respite from anxiety for those who had relatives in the East.  Within two months the battles of the Alma, Balaklava, and Inkermann had been fought.  Colonel Rolleston seemed to bear a charmed life; for, though repeatedly under fire, he had come out unscathed.  Many of his officers were killed, Fane slightly wounded, and Jack Vavasour had lost an arm.

In the ensuing spring Cecil roused herself.  Though all her hopes were dead, the native energy of her character asserted itself, and rebelled against utter stagnation.  Some letters she had received from the nurses in the Crimea rekindled her former enthusiasm, and she determined to execute her original project, and go out to the aid of her suffering countrymen.

Mrs. Rolleston was now more hopeful, and, far from opposing Cecil’s wishes, cheerfully forwarded them.  She looked upon hers as so cruelly exceptional a lot, that any absorbing occupation capable of distracting her mind was only too welcome.  And so when

                                     Spring
  Came forth, her work of gladness to contrive,
  With all her reckless birds upon the wing,

Cecil, turning “from all she brought,” was far on her way to the East, and wishing, as she assumed the black serge hospital dress, that she could as easily transform her internal consciousness as her outward identity.

Hers was not a nature to do anything by halves, and every faculty of mind and body became absorbed in these new duties.  The patient who fell into Cecil’s hands had little to complain of.  She struggled for his life when even the shadow of death had fallen on him, and sometimes, by arduous exertions and devoted nursing, saved one in whom the vital flame had wasted almost to the socket.  And then a nearly divine content came to her as she imagined she might have spared some distant heart the pangs that had almost broken her own.

But to follow her through the daily routine of duties, often painful, often touching, would be too long for the present history, so we pass abruptly to one event, a necessary link in it.

Cecil was attending a fever case, and looking anxiously for the doctor, as she fancied her patient was sinking.  He was a young man, and had been more or less unconscious ever since he was brought in.