ive. Now and then I met her
for a few fugitive moments at the hospital. Twice she ran in for
dinner, in uniform, desperately busy, arriving on the stroke of the
dinner hour and rushing away five minutes after her coffee and
cigarette, alleging as excuse the epidemic of influenza, consequent on
the vile weather, which had woefully reduced the hospital staff. She
seemed to be feverish and ill at ease, and tried to cover the symptoms
by a reversion to her old offhand manner. As I was so seldom alone with
her I could find scant opportunity for intimate conversation. I thought
that she might have regretted the frank exposition of her feelings
regarding Leonard Boyce. But she showed no sign of it. She spoke in the
most detached way of his blindness and the coming ceremony. Never once,
even on the first occasion when I met her--in the hospital
corridor--after my return from London, did her attitude vary from that
of any kind-hearted Englishwoman who deplores the mutilation of a
gallant social acquaintance. Sometimes I wanted to shake her, though I
could scarcely tell why. I certainly would not have had her weep on my
shoulder over Boyce's misfortune; nor would I have cared for her to
exhibit a vindictive callousness. She behaved with perfect propriety.
Perhaps that is what disturbed me. I was not accustomed to associate
perfect propriety with my dear Betty.

The days went on. The reception arrangements were perfected. We only
waited for the date of Boyce's arrival to be fixed. That depended on
the date of the particular Investiture by the King which Boyce's
convalescence should allow him to attend. At last the date was fixed.

A few days before the Investiture I went to London and called at Lady
Fanshawe's in Eccleston Street, whither he had been removed after
leaving the hospital. I was received in the dining-room on the ground
floor by Boyce and his mother. He wore black glasses to hide terrible
disfigurement--he lifted them to show me. One eye had been extracted.
The other was seared and sightless. He greeted me as heartily as ever,
made little jests over his infirmity, treating it lightly for his
mother's sake. She, on her side, deemed it her duty to exhibit equal
cheerfulness. She boasted of his progress in self-reliance and in the
accomplishment of various little blind man's tricks. At her bidding he
lit a cigarette for my benefit, by means of a patent fuse. He said,
when he had succeeded:

"Better than the last time