APTER XXIV

"You've got to make him believe that you wish for the marriage to take
place now, for your own sake, not for his."

It was with those words, uttered by Sir Jacques Robey, still sounding in
her ears, that Rose Otway walked up to the door of the room where Jervis
Blake, having just seen his father, was now waiting to see her.

Sir John Blake's brief "He has taken it very well. He has a far greater
sense of discipline than I had at his age," had been belied, discounted,
by the speaker's own look of suffering and of revolt.

Rose waited outside the door for a few moments. She was torn with
conflicting fears and emotions. A strange feeling of oppression and
shyness had come over her. It had seemed so easy to say that she would
be married at once, to-morrow, to Jervis. But she had not known that she
would have to ask Jervis's consent. She had supposed, foolishly, that it
would all be settled for her by Sir Jacques....

At last she turned the handle of the door, and walked through into the
room. And then, to her unutterable relief, she saw that Jervis looked
exactly as usual, except that his face, instead of being pale, as it had
been the last few days, was rather flushed.

Words which had been spoken to him less than five minutes ago were also
echoing in Jervis's brain, pushing everything else into the background.
He had said, "I suppose you think that I ought to offer to release
Rose?" and his father had answered slowly: "All I can say is that I
should do so--if I were in your place."

But now, when he saw her coming towards him, looking as she always
looked, save that something of the light and brightness which had always
been in her dear face had faded out of it, he knew that he could say
nothing of the sort. This great trouble which had come on him was her
trouble as well as his, and he knew she was going to take it and to bear
it, as he meant to take it and to bear it.

But Jervis Blake did make up his mind to one thing. There should be no
hurrying of Rose into a hasty marriage--the kind of marriage they had
planned--the marriage which was to have taken place a week before he
went back to the Front. It must be his business to battle through this
grim thing alone. It would be time enough to think of marriage when he
was up and about again, and when he had taught himself, as much as might
be possible, to hide or triumph over his infirmity.

As she came and sat down quietly by the side of his bed, on