“Captain Binning,--th Hussars, who was in command of a troop, held an important position for some time against heavy odds; and when compelled to retire, saw all his men into safety, and then, though he had himself been wounded in the left lung, supported Lieutenant Henley, who was unable to walk, until the latter was again hit and apparently killed, Captain Binning being himself again dangerously wounded a short time after.” At the end, her hand goes out to clasp his as naturally as a man-comrade’s would have done. “For the first time I know how it happened! You never would tell me!” During a minute or two he can only answer her by a hand-grip, whose vigour argues a recovered hold upon life and manhood; then-- “It is a great surprise,” he says, not very steadily. “I did not even know that I had been recommended for it.” “Do not say that you are not glad!” she cries, with a high unnatural laugh, which, in her normal state, she would have repudiated as neurotic. “Do not say that Tom, Dick, and Harry deserved it better!” As she looks at him in triumphant challenging prohibition, at his face, still that of one stunned by the shock of a so great and honourable joy, a thin image of Rupert seems to pass vapourishly between them--not of Rupert the admirable son, the delicate reticent lover, the perfectly comprehending friend, but of Rupert in white effeminacy, paling at the mere memory of a jibbing horse. Yet the Victoria Cross is no more answerable than Mafeking and her bonfire for the happening of the inevitable. That is ironically reserved for the 28th, the day on which Lavinia was to have been married to Rupert. If it could have been staved off for twenty-four hours, it would never have happened; since on the 29th Binning is to depart for Southampton to join the s.s. _Nubia_, which is taking out to the Cape drafts for half a dozen regiments already depleted by the enteric and the Boer. The day has dawned with a splendour as ironical as all else belonging to it. Lavinia is no longer at the Chestnuts, where her services have ceased to be required, and whither Féodorovna has returned, fully recovered and wholly hysterical, to see the last of her ex-patient.