There it was, sure enough, in distinct, choicely-printed types--there was no mistaking the name, or the regiment, or the authenticity of the report, and Blanche, with bloodless lips and stony eyes, could see nothing but that one line of hopeless import--“Missing, Cornet Kettering, of the 20th Lancers.” Yes, she had skimmed through killed and wounded, with the agonising fear of seeing her cousin returned in that awful list, and a deep sigh of relief was rising to her lips as she recognised no beloved name among the sufferers, when it was frozen back again by the startling truth. And there she stood, utterly colourless, her hair pushed back from her temples, and her eyes staring wildly and vacantly, as she kept her finger pressed on the dreadful line, of which she too well comprehended the meaning. The General rocked to and fro in an agony of grief, his broken exclamations of childish despair strangely mingled with those warlike sentiments of honour and resignation which become second nature in the soldier’s character. “My boy, my boy! my gallant, handsome, light-hearted Charlie! I might have known it must be so--I’ve seen it a hundred times--the youngest, the fairest, the happiest, go down at the first shot. That pale, tender lad at the sortie from Bayonne--my subaltern at Quatre Bras--my _aide-de-camp_ in the Deccan, always the brightest and the most hopeful--and now my boy, my Charlie! Why did I let him go? a soldier’s fate, poor lad. Well, well, every bullet has its billet--but, oh, he need never have gone to that savage country. O my boy, my boy! you were more than a son to me, and now you’re lying mangled and rotting in the bush below the Anatolas.” Mary alone preserved her presence of mind. Utter despair is the most powerful of sedatives; and she walked deliberately across the room, took the paper from Blanche’s unresisting hands, and satisfied herself of the worst. A special paragraph of nearly six lines was devoted to the fate of “this gallant and promising young officer, who was last seen waving his men on in a brilliant attack which he led against a numerous horde of savages; the enemy were driven from their defences at all points; but we regret to learn Cornet Kettering was reported missing at nightfall, and we have reason to fear, from the barbarous and ferocious character of Kaffir warfare, it will be almost impossible to recover or identify his remains.”