So I was shewn into the morning room—­a noble square room with French windows, looking on to the wintry garden, and with a log fire roaring up a great chimney.  On one side of the fire sat Sir Anthony, and on the other, Lady Fenimore.  And both were crying.  He rose as he saw me—­a short, crop-haired, clean-shaven, ruddy, jockey-faced man of fifty-five, the corners of his thin lips, usually curled up in a cheery smile, now piteously drawn down, and his bright little eyes now dim like those of a dead bird.  She, buxom, dark, without a grey hair in her head, a fine woman defying her years, buried her face in her hands and sobbed afresh.

“It’s good of you to come, old man,” said Sir Anthony, “but you’re in it with us.”

He handed me a telegram.  I knew, before reading it, what message it contained.  I had known, all along, but dared not confess it to myself.

“I deeply regret to inform you that your son, Lieutenant Oswald Fenimore, was killed in action yesterday while leading his men with the utmost gallantry.”

I had known him since he was a child.  By reason of my wife’s kinship, I was “Uncle Duncan.”  He was just one and twenty, but a couple of years out of Sandhurst.  Only a week before I had received an exuberant letter from him extolling his men as “super-devil-angels,” and imploring me if I loved him and desired to establish the supremacy of British arms, to send him some of Mrs. Marigold’s potted shrimp.

And now, there he was dead; and, if lucky, buried with a little wooden cross with his name rudely inscribed, marking his grave.

I reached out my hand.

“My poor old Anthony!”

He jerked his head and glance towards his wife and wheeled me to her side, so that I could put my hand on her shoulder.

“It’s bitter hard, Edith, but—­”

“I know, I know.  But all the same—­”

“Well, damn it all!” cried Sir Anthony, in a quavering voice, “he died like a man and there’s nothing more to be said.”

Presently he looked at his watch.

“By George,” said he, “I’ve only just time to get to my Committee.”

“What Committee?” I asked.

“The Lord Lieutenant’s.  I promised to take the chair.”

For the first time Lady Fenimore lifted her stricken face.

“Are you going, Anthony?”

“The boy didn’t shirk his duty.  Why should I?”

She looked at him squarely and the most poignant simulacrum of a smile I have ever seen flitted over her lips.

“Why not, darling?  Duncan will keep me company till you come back.”

He kissed his wife, a trifle more demonstratively than he had ever done in alien presence, and with a nod at me, went out of the room.

And suddenly she burst into sobbing again.

“I know it’s wrong and wicked and foolish,” she said brokenly.  “But I can’t help it.  Oh, God!  I can’t help it.”

Then, like an ass, I began to cry, too; for I loved the boy, and that perhaps helped her on a bit.