all, and that one
was Eustace Milne. He had had enough of campaigning to last him for the
present, and for every reason mightily welcomed the news that they were
ordered home. Of late an intense longing had corrie upon him to return,
but now that that ardently desired consummation had been attained he
realised that it was dashed with the sickening and desolating
consciousness of hopes shattered. The campaign, so far as he was
concerned, had been barren of result.

But for him--but for his intervention--Tom Carhayes would have been a
dead man, and Eanswyth would be free. The Kafir could not have missed
at that distance. But for his interference the bullet of the savage
would have sped true, and happiness for him--for her--would have become
the blissful, golden, reality of a lifetime. Even now he would be
hurrying back to claim her--that is, allowing for a reasonable period
exacted by decorum. But no, the cup was shattered in his grasp, and his
own was the hand that had shattered it. "A man who interferes in what
doesn't concern him deserves all he gets," was the grimly disgusted
reflection which lashed his mind again and again.

Why had he intervened to save his cousin's life? When Fortune was
playing directly into his hands he, yielding to an idiotic scruple, had
deliberately flung back into her face the chance she had held out. She
would not proffer it again. His opportunity had occurred and he had let
it go by.

Yet he could not have acted otherwise. Could he not? he thought
savagely, as at that moment his cousin's voice struck upon his ear. Not
that its utterances contained anything objectionable, but to the
listener's then frame of mind, there was something insufferably
self-assertive in their very tone. Could he not? Let him only get the
chance again. But this he never would. It was thought by many that the
war was practically at an end.

If his cousin had been a different stamp of man and one built of finer
clay, it is more than probable that Eustace would have acted
differently--would have conquered that overmastering and unlawful love
which he had so long and so successfully concealed, or at any rate would
have fled from temptation. But it was far otherwise. The fellow was
such a rough, assertive, thick-headed, inconsiderate boor, utterly
unable to appreciate his own splendid good fortune. He deserved no
mercy. Yet this was the being to whom Eanswyth was bound--whom,
moreover, she had m