And after all, the Rector was premature—we were all premature, lamenting for him over whom we were so speedily to rejoice. When Derwent put the dispatch into my hand (he did not send, but brought it, to make more sure), I could not read the words for tears. My eyes were clear enough when I saw that terrible killed, in which we believed to read Bertie’s fate. But the dear boy’s own message, in rapid reply to one which Derwent, out of my knowledge, had managed to have sent to him, floated upon me in a mist of weeping. The truth came inarticulate to my mind—I could neither see, nor scarcely hear the words in which it was conveyed.

But, alas! alas! it was Captain Nicholas Hughes who had fallen, instead of Bertie. I inquired all that I could learn about this unknown soldier, with a remorseful grief in the midst of my joy, which I cannot describe. I could not join in the tumult of exultation which rose round me. I could not forget that this news, which came so welcome to us, brought desolation upon another house. I could not think of him but as Bertie’s substitute, nor help a painful, fantastical idea that it was to our prayers and our dear boy’s safety that he owed his death. I was almost glad to find that the widow whom he had left behind him had need of what kind offices we could do her for the bringing up of her children, and vowed to myself, with a compunction as deep as it was, no doubt, imaginary, that she should never want while Estcourt remained mine. Was it not their dismal loss and bereavement which had saved the heir of my father’s house?

“It is the fortune of war,” said Derwent, when he learned, to his profound amazement, this idea which had taken possession of me. “It is the will of God,” said Captain Hughes’s pale widow, lifting her tearful face to me, from under the heavy veil of her mourning. So it was—but sharp and poignant is the contest between grief and joy.

“See what your despised telegraph can do, after all!” cried Derwent, rejoicing with all his honest heart over the news he had brought.

“But, ah! if Bertie’s friend had been poor!” said I. “How many souls do we wring with additional pangs, to have our anxiety dispelled the more easily? Think of the news of a battle, with so many killed and wounded—and some dreadful fortnight, or maybe month, to live through before one knows whether one’s own is dead or alive. No, ’tis a cruel earthly Geni, and not a celestial Spirit—it does good now and then, only because it cannot help it—relieves us, Derwent, but slaughters poor Mrs. Hughes.”

“I believe Clare is not half-content—nobody must be killed to satisfy you women—but, unfortunately that will not do in this world,” said Derwent. “We have to be thankful for our own exemption, without entering too deeply into other people’s grief. And most of us find that philosophy easy enough.”

“Most of us are very poor creatures,” said Maurice Harley, sententiously. He came alone to make his inquiries this time. Alice was invisible, and not to be heard of. I could not see her even when I called at the cottage. She had taken overpowering shame to herself, and shrank from my eyes. It was her brother who carried our news to his mother’s house—carried it, as I discovered incidentally, with the rarest and most delicate care for her—rigidly keeping up the fiction of supposing her not to care for it, nor to be specially interested, any more than for her old playfellow. He was ill at ease himself, and distracted with questions no longer of a dilettante kind. In my eyes this increased his kindness all the more.

“Yes, we are poor creatures the most of us,” repeated Maurice, when my husband—who did not notice any particular improvement in the Fellow of Exeter, and was disposed to be contemptuous, as elder men are, of his superiority to ordinary mortals—had sauntered, half-laughing, half-disgusted, out of the room. “Something you said the other day has stuck to my memory, Mrs. Crofton—help me out with it, pray. Are we worth a woman’s tears, the greater part of us? What is the good of us? I don’t mean Bertie, who is doing something in this world, but, for example, such a fellow as me!”

“Take care, Maurice! I see hoofs and a tail upon that humility of yours,” said I. “You, who are so wise, do you not know that women and their tears are no more superlative than men and their doings? Did you think I meant the tender, heroical, sentimental tears of romance, for the sake of which the sublime knight might be content to die? No such thing. I meant only that there seems a kind of pathetic, homely justice in it, when the man who dies—especially the man who dies untimely—has a woman belonging to him, to be his true and faithful mourner; that is all—it is nothing superlative; the sublime men are no better loved than the homeliest ones. Alice, if you asked her, would give you the poetical youthful interpretation of it, but I mean no such thing, Maurice. We want no great deeds, we womenkind; we were born to like you, and to cry over you, troublesome creatures that you are!”

“Ah! that is very well,” said Maurice, who in his heart was young enough to like the superlative idea best. “I wish I had a supreme right to somebody’s tears—but why should anybody cry over me? Am not I foredoomed to shrivel up into a College Don?”

“If you please,” said I.

“And if I don’t please?” cried Maurice, starting up, and seizing, after his usual fashion, a book off the table. He made a hurried march about the room, as usual, too; throwing that down; and picking up another to look at its title, then returned, and repeated, with some emphasis—“And what if I don’t please?”

“Why then, please God, you will do something better,” said I; “I hope so sincerely—it will give me the greatest pleasure—but you don’t make any progress by talking of it; that is our woman’s province. Do, Maurice, do! don’t say!”

The young man flashed with an angry and abashed color. “Thank you, I will, if it were to carry a hod. I have not forgotten,” he said, with a little bitter meaning, “that I am a widow’s son.”

“A widow’s son should be the prince of sons,” said I. “You make me preach, you young people, though it is not my vocation. Carry a hod then, if you will, like a gentleman and a Christian, and I, for one, will bid you God speed.”

Maurice put down his book, and came forward to me, holding out his hand. I suspect he liked me, though he had no great reason, and I confess, now-a-days, that I liked him. He held out his hand to say good-bye, and in saying good-bye opened his heart.

“Mrs. Crofton, you preach very well, considering that it is not your vocation; but I begin to think I am coming to that big preacher, Life, whom you once told me of. He is not a college don. Do you know,” said Maurice, with a frank, confused laugh, and rising color, “I’m in love?”

“I suspected as much,” said I. “Is all well?”

“All was ill, what with my own folly, and what with that spiteful little witch at the Rectory,” said Maurice; “but it’s coming right again. If I were to die to-morrow—little as I deserve them—I believe I should have these woman’s tears.”

“My dear boy, be thankful, and go home and live!” said I, with the water in my eyes. I was half inclined to kiss, and bless, and cry over him in the foolishness of my heart.

“I will,” said Maurice, in the fulness and effusion of his; and he kissed my hand with a congenial impulse, and went away abruptly, moved beyond speaking. He left me more profoundly and pleasantly touched than I had been for a long time. Perhaps I thought, with natural vanity, that I had a little—just a little—share in it. Dire must be the disappointment, and heavy the calamity, which should shrivel up Maurice Harley now into a college don.