"Oh, Richard," she whispered once, with her soft face nestling in her husband's neck, while his protecting arm went kindly round her; "the greatest joy on earth is to possess a child--the greatest woe to lose it! The loss of our parents we may, and must, in the course of time anticipate; but the loss of our children--never!" "But Denzil will return, Conny--you would not have the boy tied to your apron-strings, like Sybil?" urged Richard, laughing to cheer and rouse her; but, nevertheless, the rank, title and fair fortune now before them all, the mother's anxious heart foreboded sorrow in the future; and now came the last night her boy was to sleep under his father's roof, ere he was to go forth into the world--forth like a branch torn from its parent stem. When all were in slumber that night, poor Constance stole in to watch her Denzil as he slept. The feeble rays of the night-lamp played on the features of her boy, and on the glitter of a laced scarlet-coat and gold epaulettes that hung on the pier glass. With the vanity natural to youth, he had been contemplating himself in his Regimental finery ere he went to repose, and his bullock-trunk and overland, lettered for "India," were among the first things that caught her eye, bringing more home to her heart the fact of his departure. He was still hers! To-morrow he should be far away from her, out on the great and stirring highway of life--her petted boy no longer; and smiles, like ripples upon shining water, seemed to spread over the smooth face of the sleeping lad, even as the tears gathered in the eyes, and prayer in the heart of the mother who watched him for a time, with her hands clasped, and stole away with many a backward glance, thinking how lonely she should be when that hour on the morrow came. And this tall and handsome lad--this young soldier going forth to carry the Queen's colours in the distant East, was once her "baby boy," the child she had borne, nursed and nurtured. She had a sweet and sad, yet proud and joyous consciousness in this. Had he been weakly, deformed or crippled, she should have loved him all the same; but then, thank God! her Denzil was so handsome. Often in far-away lands, on weary marches, in comfortless tents and rickety bungalows, on the banks of the Sutlej, or amid hostile Sikhs and Afghans, would he dream of the soft and loving face that had been bent in silence over his--the face he never more might see, save in those kind visions that God sends in sleep, to soothe--it may be, to sadden and to warn us. "No child can ever know how dearly its parents love it--how they suffer in its illness, loss or departure," whispered Constance to herself; "still," she thought upbraidingly, "I left my poor father to sorrow in his humble home at Montreal--but then it was with a husband, so dear and true!"