you were as poor as Lazarus I should call the boy a spoilt child of fortune to-day. Hum-yes, indeed," and he drew out his handkerchief and blew his nose loudly by way of fortifying the assertion.

66

"I wanted you all," she said in a minute or two; we are going to have a photograph, and I am going to ask you two gentlemen to stand behind Dick and support him as you always have done. You know, I suppose, why Mr M'Gregor and Miss Lauder cannot be here. Oh dear," as she gathered that we were yet in the dark, "they are with the Trehernes, and the news only came two days ago that Mr Bertie Treherne is missing. It is so sad for them all, and it is so much better that that kind Mr M'Gregor should stop with them."

66 And pray where do I come in?" inquired Ferrier as we moved in the direction of the fast gathering group.

"Need you ask? Where you have always been since I was in my cradle. With my dear father supporting your ward who would have her own way."

As soon as the first group had been taken, the two young Loders insisted on another,-Laurence Ferrier and those two whom he was wont in jest to call his foster-daughters.

"What are we going to pose as ?" he kept on asking, though obviously pleased at the compliment paid him,-"Satyr and attendant nymphs? Two Beauties and a Beast, or what?"

"The best fellow I ever knew in my life, and the two prettiest girls of my acquaintance, though I say it who shouldn't," answered Lord Leuchars; and a moment later, as the group was being taken, he added in an undertone to Mrs Ferrier, "and I am not sure that Laurence isn't the best looking of the three."

And indeed, as I looked at them, the noble face of the man who stood with one arm round each of those lovely girls' waists reminded me of the face of Apelles in the great picture.

362

CHAPTER XXIX.

MISSING.

MISSING! perhaps lying wounded and half-starved on the veldt; dead perhaps, whether buried or unburied; a prisoner on the way to Pretoria, there to be treated like a common convict, mocked, insulted.

What nameless horrors, what hideous possibilities, what agonising doubts and uncertainties were suggested by that word "missing"!

There had come to Holmwood one cheery letter from Bertie to say that he had reached Capetown, and was starting upcountry on the next day,-then a period of silence; and a fortnight ago had flashed across the seas the fatal announcement that Lieutenant Bertram Treherne, Coldstreams, was missing, and since that there had been no news.

What wonder then that, in the shortening days at Holmwood, the Squire wore a grey look on his face; that Mrs Treherne moved about the house softly, an image of silent despair; that Tom M'Gregor, trying to speak words of comfort where there was no comfort, lay awake at nights and groaned as he saw daylight approaching, and felt that the time was coming to get up and go downstairs and resume the same old weary task of trying to keep up the spirits of three disconsolate and heartbroken people.

In a way most of all to be pitied was the girl upon whose

conscience it was lying like a dull weight that she was personally responsible for the boy having gone to South Africa,-that the agony and suffering which her host and hostess were enduring might have been spared to them if she had never set foot inside the grounds of Holmwood. To whom was she with her heavy burden of remorse and desolation to turn for relief?

At one moment she was tempted to throw herself upon Tom M'Gregor's mercy, to tell him all, and ask him to forgive her, and allow her to go and hide her wretched head in some sisterhood, where she might busy herself in good works in the hope of redeeming her fault and of erasing from her mind the recollection of the cruel punishment it had brought on herself guilty and others innocent. Nor was it a selfish fear that checked the impulse. One man, the poor girl said to herself, had already gone to his death for her sake, and she shrank from inflicting deadly pain upon the other-that other who had been Bertie's friend, to whom Bertie had sent his last message by her lips; the man who by her father's dying bed had told her that he loved her, who, since her father's death, had, so far as in him lay, anticipated her every wish.

At another time would come to Elsie the thought of taking her sympathetic hostess into her confidence. Yet what good was to be gained by that? Even that most gentle of women, Mrs Treherne, could never again have the same feeling for a girl who had allowed herself to drift into loving one man at a time when her heart was professedly in the keeping of another, —a girl who had in her weakness allowed the new lover to go off to the wars, leaving all that was nearest and dearest behind him, and the old lover to come back to her side unsuspicious and unsuspecting.

It was a cruel misfortune for the girl that her old and faithful friend, Miss Firchild, had been called away two days after Bertie's departure to nurse a widowed and invalid sister. In the absence of outside support she had to fall back upon her own resources, and finally at much cost to herself she had mapped out for herself this course of duty-to stay with the

Trehernes till cruel doubt had changed into more cruel certainty, and then in course of time to carry out her engagement with Tom M'Gregor; to give to him, not her fresh young love, but her obedience, her care, and so far as it might be her sympathy; to try to be the faithful, the amiable, though she could never be in the proper sense of the word-the loving wife of the man whom Bertie Treherne had loved like a brother.

"I can never be happy again myself," she argued, "but as well be miserable that way as any other so long as I can make him happy."

On the side of good fortune, if any fortune could be good, she accounted it that there was little opportunity and little inclination for love-making in the present, when two other heartbroken people demanded constant companionship and constant sympathy.

There was yet another person sorely ill at ease in those days, the Rector of Barksworth. The joy of his daughter's happy letters and the greater joy of an occasional sight of her happy face was sadly marred by the thought of that young man whom he had sent away from England very sorrowful, and whom he had read of in the papers as missing.

And yet so absolute a confidence had the Rector that Providence ordereth all things for the best, that hope never entirely deserted him. Constantly repeated short visits to London, which the healthy state of his parish allowed, and which Laurence Ferrier ascribed to the natural feeling of loneliness consequent on his daughter's marriage, were dictated by the circumstance that an old college friend filled a post of some responsibility at the War Office.

Everything comes, they say, to him that waiteth, and to that expectant watcher came a day when, having stopped a night with the Ferriers, he drove to the War Office to make inquiries on his way to catch an early morning train.

"No news at all," was the answer to the usual inquiry, and Mr Balfour's foot was already on the step of his hansom, when a messenger came flying down the stairs of the War Office with

the request that he would wait for a few minutes. Glancing at his watch to find that in all probability he must, if he waited, miss his train, he dismissed his cab and followed the messenger into an ante-room. A full quarter of an hour elapsed before he received a summons to go upstairs, and even then he found his friend's room empty. Another delay for a few minutes, and, as the door opened and the clerk came in with a paper in his hands, Mr Balfour felt that he was trembling like an aspen leaf.

Have

"Good morning, Balfour; news of your man at last,-good news, too. Heavens, man! how white you look. something?"

"The news, please, nothing else."

"Here it is then-Treherne, Coldstreams, previously reported missing, invalided home-there, that is official. A private wire is still more satisfactory. The young fellow was missing for two days only, found his way back to camp with a flesh wound through the arm and another through the leg; touch of enteric; much better, almost well, in fact, when they reached St Vincent's; conduct had been most gallant. He ought to be home in four days. That's all, I think. Now, are satisfied?"

you

"It's quite certain ?"

'Quite certain; in fact, I am going to telegraph to his people now. I can't understand why these mistakes occur, but they do occur in a big-eh-system."

"Don't telegraph; let me take the message. I will catch the first train. There are reasons why a personal message would be better."

"It's very good of you," said the official, hesitating. "Upon my honour, I am not sure yours is not the better plan, if you don't really mind the trouble. Joy never kills, they say; but still, if you think it better, you shall take the message. Look out a train in Bradshaw, will you, while I just put it in some form."

Jack Treherne at Holmwood had been making a miserable