she really desired to hear it,
but----

Then Myra took a very characteristic line. She sat up with instant
decision; her pale face flushed, and her large pathetic grey eyes shone
with sudden brightness.

"Pardon me, sir," she said, "for interposing; but I never wish to know
that name. My husband would have been the first to desire that it should
not be told. And, personally, I should be sorry that there should be any
man on earth whose hand I could not bring myself to touch in friendship.
The hand that widowed me, did so without intention. Let it remain always
to me an abstract instrument of the will of Providence. I shall never
even try to guess to which of Michael's comrades that hand belonged."

Lady Ingleby was honest in making this decision; and the Very Great
Personage stepped into his brougham, five minutes later, greatly
relieved, and filled with admiration for Lord Ingleby's beautiful and
right-minded widow. She had always been all that was most charming. Now
she added sound good sense, to personal charm. Excellent! Incomparable!
Poor Ingleby! Poor--Ah! _he_ must not be mentioned, even in thought.

Yes; Lady Ingleby was absolutely honest in coming to her decision. And
yet, from that moment, two names revolved perpetually in her mind, around
a ceaseless question--the only men mentioned constantly by Michael in his
letters as being always with him in his experiments, sharing his
interests and his dangers: Ronald Ingram, and Billy Cathcart--dear boys,
both; her devoted adorers; almost her dearest, closest friends; faithful,
trusted, tried. And now the haunting question circled around all thought
of them: "Was it Ronald? Or was it Billy? Which? Billy or Ronnie? Ronnie
or Billy?" Myra had said: "I shall never even try to guess," and she had
said it honestly. She did not try to guess. She guessed, in spite of
trying not to do so; and the certainty, and yet _un_certainty of her
surmisings told on her nerves, becoming a cause of mental torment which
was with her, subconsciously, night and day.

Time went on. The frontier war was over. England, as ever, had been bound
to win in the end; and England had won. It had merely been a case of
time; of learning wisdom by a series of initial mistakes; of expending a
large amount of British gold and British blood. England's supremacy was
satisfactorily asserted; and, those of her brave troops who had survived
the initial mistakes, came home; among them Ronald Ingram and Billy