he vacuum. The Duchess and
the Family made the best of a bad bargain, hoping, no doubt, that
Lorillard would soon be safely killed; and a delicious dish of romance
was served up to the public.

_I_ was the only one beyond pardon, it seemed. According to the Duchess
I was a wicked little treacherous cat not to have told her what was
going on, so that it could have been stopped in time. A complaint was
made to Grandmother. But that peppery old darling--after scolding me
well--took my part, and quarrelled with the Duchess.

June was too busy being _The_ Bride of All War Brides to bother much
with me, and Lorillard was training hard for France. So a kind of magic
glass wall arose between the Affair and me. Months passed (everyone
knows the history of those months!) and then the air raids began:
Zeppelins over London!

It was _smart_, you know, not to be frightened, but to run out and gape,
or go up on the roof, when one of those great silver shapes was sighted
in the night sky. June went on the roof. Oh poor, beautiful June! A
fragment of shrapnel pierced her heart and killed her instantly, before
she could have felt a pang.

The news almost "broke Lorillard up," so his pal who witnessed the
marriage with me put the case. Robert hadn't even once been back in
"Blighty" since he first went out. Ninety-six hours' leave was due just
then. He spent it coming to June's funeral, and--returning to the Front.

Since that tragic time long ago he had seen a great deal of fighting,
had been wounded twice, had received his Captaincy and a D. S. O. Four
years and a half had been eaten by Hun locusts since he'd last appeared
on the stage, and more than three since the death of June. Everyone
thought that Lorillard would take up his old career where he had laid it
down. But he refused several star parts, and announced that he never
intended to act again. The reason was, he said, that he did not wish to
do so; that he could hardly remember how he had felt at the time when
acting made up the great interest of his life.

He bought a quaint old cottage near the river, not many miles from a
house the Duchess owned--a happy house, where he had spent week-ends
that wonderful summer of 1914. June had loved the place, and her body
lay (buried in a glass coffin to preserve its beauty for ever) in the
cedar-shaded graveyard of the country church near by. Once she had
laughingly told Lorillard she would like to lie there if she died, and
he had