“Why not send him on board a hospital ship?  Could he bear the journey to Balaclava?”

“Undoubtedly.  I was going to suggest it.”

“There is the Burlington Castle, his own uncle’s ship:  she is now fitted up as a hospital, with nurses and every appliance.  He will soon get well on board her.”

There were other and still more potent aids to convalescence on board the Burlington Castle.  A band of devoted female nurses tended the sick; and amongst them, demurely clad in a black dress, her now sad white face half hidden under an immense coif, was one who answered to the name of Miss Hidalgo.

It was Mariquita, placed there by the kindness of the military authorities, anxious to make all the return possible by helping in the good work.  The relationship of the captain to Stanislas was remembered by Colonel Blythe, and the Burlington Castle seemed the fittest place to receive the poor girl.

Good Captain Faulks had been taken into the secret.

“Poor child!” he had said.  “I will watch over her for dear Stanny’s sake.  I was fond of that lad, and she shall be like a daughter to me.”

At first she seemed quite dazed and stupefied by her grief.  She gave up her lover as utterly lost, and would not listen to the consolation and encouragement offered.

“He’ll turn up, my dear,” said Captain Faulks; “you’ll see.  He was not saved from drowning to die by a Russian rope.  Wait; he’ll weather the storm.”

Mariquita would shake her head hopelessly and go about her appointed task with an unflagging but despairing diligence that was touching to see.

Uncle Barto, as he always wished her to call him, was the first to tell her the good news.

“He’s found, my dear.  What did I tell you?  They couldn’t keep him; I knew that.”

“The Holy Virgin be praised!” cried Mariquita.  “But is he well—­uninjured?  When shall we see him?”

“Soon, my dear, soon.  He will be brought—­I mean he will come on board in a few days now.”

A simple pressure of the hand, a half-whispered exclamation of joy in her own fluent Spanish, was the only greeting that Mariquita gave her wounded lover when they lifted him on to the deck of the hospital-ship.  But the vivid blush that mantled in her cheek, and the glad light that came into her splendid eyes, showed how much she had suffered, and how great was her emotion at this moment of trial.

As for Stanislas, he was nearly speechless with surprise.

“You here, Mariquita!  What strange adventure is this?  Tell me at once—­”

“No, no,” interposed the doctor; “it is a long story.  You are tired now, and will have plenty of time to hear from Miss Hidalgo all about herself.”

It was the telling of this story as she sat by the side of his couch, hand locked in hand, and he learnt by degrees the full measure of her self-sacrificing devotion, that did McKay so much good.  It braced and strengthened him, giving him a new and stronger desire to live and enjoy the unspeakable blessing of this true woman’s love.