Her fears were unformulated, but she hoped that Lucy upstairs in the bed-room had not heard. The cry ceased abruptly; some one was buying a paper; then was taken up again with increased vociferousness. Gertrude strained her ears to listen. "Terrible slaughter, terrible slaughter of British troops!" floated up in the hideous tones. She listened, fascinated with a nameless horror. "A regiment cut to pieces! Death of a general! Special edition!" The fiend stood under the window, vociferating upwards. In an instant Gertrude had slipped down the dusky staircase, and was giving the man sixpence for a halfpenny paper. Standing beneath the gas-jet in the passage, she opened the sheet and read; then, still clutching it, sank down white and trembling on the lowest stair. Noiseless, rapid footfalls came down behind her, some one touched her on the shoulder, and a strange voice said in her ear, "Give it to me." She started up, putting the hateful thing behind her. "No, no, no, Lucy! It is not true." "Yes, yes, yes! don't be ridiculous, Gerty." Lucy took the paper in her hands, bore it to the light, and read, Gertrude hiding her face against the wall. The paper stated, briefly, that news had arrived at head-quarters of the almost total destruction of the troops which, under General Somerset, had set out for the interior of Africa some weeks before. A few stragglers, chiefly native allies, had reached the coast in safety, and had reported that the General himself had been among the first to perish. Messrs. Steele and Jermyn, special artists of _The Photogravure_ and _The Woodcut_, respectively, had been among those to join the expedition. No news of their fate had been ascertained, and there was reason to fear that they had shared the doom of the others. "It is not true." Lucy's voice rang hollow and strange. She stood there, white and rigid, under the gas-jet. Mrs. Maryon, who had bought a paper on her own account, issued from the shop-parlour in time to see the poor young lady sway forward into her sister's arms. * * * * * Those were dark days that followed. At first there had been hope; but as time went on, and further details of the catastrophe came to light, there was nothing for the most sanguine to do but to accept the worst. Gertrude herself felt that the one pale gleam of uncertainty which yet remained was, perhaps, the most cruel feature of the case. If only Lucy's hollow eyes could drop their natural tears above Frank's grave she might again find peace. Frank's grave! Gertrude found herself starting back incredulous at the thought. Death, as a general statement, is so easy of utterance, of belief; it is only when we come face to face with it that we find the great mystery so cruelly hard to realise; for death, like love, is ever old and ever new. "People always come back in books," Fanny had said, endeavouring, in all good faith, to administer consolation; and Lucy had actually laughed.