Then her Ladyship came in, and following her, in tiptoe silence, the young soldier himself. But alas!--it was all true about the arm. There was the loose right sleeve, looped up to his coat. But its survivor was still in evidence, and Mr. Pelly, as he took the hand that was left in his own, wondered if he was not still dreaming, so full was his mind of the story of that other hand, lost four hundred years ago. He could not dismiss the picture from his thoughts; and as he stood there talking with the young soldier, in whom he could see the saddening of his terrible experience through all the joy of his return, he was always conscious of its presence, conscious of its eyes fixed on all that passed before it--conscious of its comparison between the lot of its original, and Madeline's. And it made the old gentleman feel quite eerie and uncomfortable. So he resolved to say good-night, and did so as soon as a pause came in an earnest conversation aside between the Baronet and his Lady, who seemed to be enforcing a view by argument. Mr. Pelly heard the last words: "I have told this dear, silly fellow Mad must speak for herself. I won't say anything.... No--not to-morrow; she had better be told and come down now." Here a subcolloquy. "Wouldn't she have gone to bed? Oh no, Eliza said not. Besides, she could slip something on." And then the mainstream again. "You must give me a little time to tell her, you know. One o'clock, isn't it? That doesn't matter. Just think if it was a party! You'll find I'm right, George." For when Lady Upwell is pleased and excited she calls her husband by his Christian name without the Sir. When she had departed the General went back on a previous conversation. "But we can't make out yet, Jack, how we came not to get any wire about it--as soon as it was known you were alive. It ought to have been in the papers a month ago." "Nobody knows out there yet, except Head Quarters. Don't you see? As soon as I was fit to get on a horse, I rode all night across the veldt, and reported myself in the early morning. I begged them to keep me dark for a bit, and old Pipeclay said he could manage it...." "But why did you want it kept dark?" "I'll tell you directly. When I had settled that, I made a rush for Port Elizabeth, and just caught the _Briton_. Do you know, I was so anxious nobody should know anything about it till I knew about Madeline that I travelled as Captain Maclagan. And when I got to Southampton there was a Mrs. Maclagan and two grown-up daughters inquiring for me! So really no one knew anything at all about me till you did."