'What do you mean, Lucretia?' 'Well, that she is not the first married lady you have taken a tender interest in.' 'Lucretia!' exclaimed the baronet, in a tone of angry expostulation, as some of their gentlemen guests came noisily in, in Russell cords, top boots, and spurs, some in pink and some in black coats. At that moment elsewhere were others who were more deeply and terribly interested in the startling tidings from Matarieh, flashed by the same electric wire. Lord Aberfeldie was leisurely opening the _Times_, which Mr. Tappleton had duly cut and aired for him, with the other morning papers. His eyes ran rapidly over the columns for the last, news from Egypt, which seemed very tame now, as all the fighting and excitement were over; so Lady Aberfeldie was not watching him, as she used to do, with anxiety, and neither was Olive, who was already deep in the pages of the _Queen_, when an exclamation that escaped him made them both start. 'What is the matter?' cried Lady Aberfeldie. 'You look ill, dear.' 'Uncle, what do you see?' added Olive. 'Is anything wrong with--with----' 'Allan--yes.' He was pale with a strange grey pallor, totally unlike his usually sunburned and healthy tint, and he looked dazed as his face sank forward on his breast. 'Our poor boy--our poor boy!' 'God help us, Aberfeldie! What is it?' Olive snatched up the paper, and, after reading the paragraph we have copied, reeled into a chair. And now a great horror fell upon all the three, the mother's memory flashing back to the baby-boy that had crowed and smiled upon her knee, and whose first tottering efforts to cross the nursery floor she remembered yet. Lord Aberfeldie, after recovering a little from the shock, telegraphed to the War-Office for further information, but could obtain none. They read the fatal paragraph again and again, till every word of it seemed to be burned into their brains, and could but indulge in endless surmises, and hope against hope; for had not the public prints been teeming with the harrowing details of the capture of Professor Palmer, Captain Gill, and Lieutenant Charrington, and of them being pitilessly slaughtered by the Bedouins of the Aligal tribe? As Olive recalled all this, her blood grew cold with apprehension. The paragraph, though a terrible one, was frightfully vague. He was 'supposed to have fallen' into the hands of the Bedouins. At all events, his party had come into Grand Cairo _without him!_ She, like Lady Aberfeldie, could not realise it for a time. Alternately she sat like one stunned, and then walked up and down the room with her slender fingers interlaced tightly and clasped upon her head, as if she would thereby still the trouble that throbbed in her brain and repress her heavy sorrow.