e, and for everything you said about Captain
Sherwood--for _everything_, remember--I want you to remember."

With a light pressure of her fingers she was gone, slipping away
through the shrubbery, and he did not see her again.

IV

So he came to his last morning at Bishopsthorpe; and as he dressed, he
wished it could have been different; that he were not still conscious of
that baffling wall of reserve between himself and Chev's people, for
whom, despite all, he had come to have a real affection.

In the breakfast-room he found them all assembled, and his last meal
there seemed to him as constrained and difficult as any that had
preceded it. It was over finally, however, and in a few minutes he would
be leaving.

"I can never thank you enough for the splendid time I've had here," he
said as he rose. "I'll be seeing Chev to-morrow, and I'll tell him all
about everything."

Then he stopped dead. With a smothered exclamation, old Sir Charles had
stumbled to his feet, knocking over his chair, and hurried blindly out
of the room; and Gerald said, "_Mother_!" in a choked appeal.

As if it were a signal between them, Lady Sherwood pushed her chair back
a little from the table, her long delicate fingers dropped together
loosely in her lap; she gave a faint sigh as if a restraining mantle
slipped from her shoulders, and, looking up at the youth before her, her
fine pale face lighted with a kind of glory, she said, "No, dear lad,
no. You can never tell Chev, for he is gone."

"_Gone_!" he cried.

"Yes," she nodded back at him, just above a whisper; and now her face
quivered, and the tears began to rush down her cheeks.

"Not _dead_!" he cried. "Not Chev--not that! O my God, Gerald, not
_that_!"

"Yes," Gerald said. "They got him two days after you left."

It was so overwhelming, so unexpected and shocking, above all so
terrible, that the friend he had so greatly loved and admired was gone
out of his life forever, that young Cary stumbled back into his seat,
and, crumpling over, buried his face in his hands, making great uncouth
gasps as he strove to choke back his grief.

Gerald groped hastily around the table, and flung an arm about his
shoulders.

"Steady on, dear fellow, steady," he said, though his own voice broke.

"When did you hear?" Cary got out at last.

"We got the official notice just the day before you came--and Withers
has written us particulars since."

"And you _let_ me come in spite of it!