ye, dear, long ago,' he stammered haltingly. 'I've no
right to behave like this.'

'Why?' she asked. 'What can make any difference between us?'

He took her to his heart again at those fond words, and laid his lips
upon her forehead. De Blacquaire's crutches had long since ceased
to crunch along the road towards the hospital, and Jervase's broad
shoulders had gone out of sight. There was no human creature near, but
far and far away overhead a lark was soaring and singing. Many and many
a pair of English lovers had heard the same song as the bird had hailed
the rising or the setting sun, and both the young hearts beat to that
native sounding music which rang so far away from home. Their lips came
together, and there was music in their hearts.

'Take me back to the hospital, Polson,' she said, disengaging herself
from his arms. 'I am on duty within a quarter of an hour.'

She took a little watch from her girdle, and looked at it with a cry.

'I have barely five minutes, and I have never failed to relieve guard
since I came. Is that the word, dear?' She took his arm sedately, and
walked along with him, he prodding at the wet gravel with his stick, and
she half supporting him.

'Was that true?' she asked. 'Did you know that I was near you?'

'Did I know!' said Polson in a voice that was worth a thousand
protestations to her ears.

'I always thought,' said Irene, 'that I disliked Major de Blacquaire
until a week or two ago; but whilst you were lying there ill and
delirious, he behaved so kindly that I shall never forget him. And he
told me--you won't mind, Polson, dear, you won't let anything I say
wound you? He told me that the past was buried. That awful, awful night
will never be quite forgotten, but it has left nothing behind it. Your
father has paid everything, and there is not a word to be spoken by
anybody, ever any more.'

The lark sang in the thin sunlight as if he would break his very heart
for joy, and the lovers walked homewards slowly, arm in arm.

CHAPTER XIII

It was the First of May, and that same good three-master, the _Caesar_,
which had carried Major de Blacquaire and Sergeant Jervase from the
Crimea to Scutari, was bowling merrily along south of Naples, where
Vesuvius had his smoking cap on. There were many invalided men on board,
and amongst them three with whom this story has a particular concern.

'You are right, Captain Tompson, it is abominably unlucky; I had
reckoned on seeing th