any rate a
while, at Boulogne. But they now think it wiser, if it be in any way
possible, to bring them straight back."

Rose hardly heard what he said. She was absorbed in wondering which of
the stretchers now being brought out of the ambulances bore the form of
Jervis Blake; but she accepted, with a quiet submission which increased
the great surgeon's already good opinion of her, his decree that no one
excepting himself and his nurses was to see or speak to any of the
wounded that night.

CHAPTER XXIII

"Time and the weather run through the roughest day." It may be doubted
if Rose Otway knew that consoling old proverb, but with her time, even
in the shape of a very few days, and perhaps, too, the weather, which
was remarkably fine and mild for the time of year, soon wrought a
wonderful change.

And as she sat by Jervis Blake's bedside, on a bright, sunny day in late
November, it seemed to her as if she had nothing left to wish for. The
two nurses who attended on him so kindly and so skilfully told her that
he was going on well--far better, in fact, than they could have
expected. And though Sir Jacques Robey did not say much, she had no
reason to suppose him other than satisfied. True, Jervis's face looked
strained and thin, and there was a cradle over his right foot, showing
where the worst injury had been. But the wound in his shoulder was
healing nicely, and once or twice he had spoken of when he would be able
to go back; but now he had left off doing that, for he saw that it
troubled her.

Yesterday something very pleasant had happened, and something which, to
Jervis Blake himself, was quite unexpected. He had been Mentioned in
Despatches, in connection with a little affair, as he described it,
which had happened weeks ago, on the Aisne! One of the other two men
concerned in it had received the Victoria Cross, and Rose was secretly
rather hurt, as was also Lady Blake, that Jervis had not been equally
honoured. But that thought did not occur to either his father or
himself.

Just now Rose was enjoying half an hour of pleasant solitude with her
lover, after what had been a trying morning for him. Sir Jacques Robey
had asked down an old friend of his own, a surgeon too, to see Jervis,
and they had spent quite a long time pulling the injured foot about.

Sir John Blake had also come down to spend the day at Witanbury. He had
been able to get away for a few hours from his work at the War Office to
tell