So, when we raised our glasses and drank gladly to the success of Willie Connor the living, and put from our thoughts Frank Etherington the dead, you must not account it to us as lack of human pity.  You must be lenient in your judgment of those who are thrown into the furnace of a great war.

Lady Fenimore smiled on Betty.  “We should all be proud, my dear, if Captain Connor won the Victoria Cross.  But you mustn’t set your heart on it.  That would be foolish.  Hundreds of thousands of men deserve the V.C. ten times a day, and they can’t all be rewarded.”

Betty laughed gaily at good Lady Fenimore’s somewhat didactic reproof.  “You know I’m not an absolute idiot.  Fancy the poor dear coming home all over bandages and sticking-plaster.  ’Where’s your V. C?’ ‘I haven’t got it.’  ’Then go back at once and get it or I shan’t love you.’  Poor darling!” Suddenly the laughter in her eyes quickened into something very bright and beautiful.  “There’s not a woman in England prouder of her husband than I am.  No V.C. could possibly reward him for what he has done.  But I want it for myself.  I’d like my babies to cut their teeth on it.

When I went out to the Boer War, the most wonderful woman on earth said to me on parting: 

“Wherever you are, dear, remember that I am always with you in spirit and soul and heart and almost in body.”

And God knows she was.  And when I returned a helpless cripple she gathered me in her brave arms on the open quay at Southampton, and after a moment or two of foolishness, she said: 

“Do you know, when I die, what you’ll find engraven on my heart?”

“No,” said I.

“Your D.S.O. ribbon.”

So when Betty talked about her babies and the little bronze cross, my eyes grew moist and I felt ridiculously sentimental.

Not a word, of course, was spoken before Betty of the new light, or the new darkness, whichsoever you will, that had been cast on the tragedy of Althea.  I could not do otherwise than agree with the direct-spoken old lady who had at once correlated the adventure in Carlisle with the plunge into the Wellingsford Canal.  And so did Sir Anthony.  They were very brave, however, the little man and Edith, in their dinner-talk with Betty.  But I saw that the past fortnight had aged them both by a year or more.  They had been stabbed in their honour, their trust, and their faith.  It was a secret terror that stalked at their side by day and lay stark at their side by night.  It was only when the ladies had left us that Sir Anthony referred to the subject.

“I suppose you know that young Randall Holmes has bolted.”

“So his mother informed me to-day.”

He pricked his ears.  “Does she know where he has gone to?”

“No,” said I.

“What did I tell you?” said Sir Anthony.

I held up my glass of port to the light and looked through it.

“A lot of damfoolishness, my dear old friend,” said I.