oach of that
to which, from the days of his chivalrous boyhood, he had looked
forward, as the supreme good of life--the chance of a soldier's glory
and a soldier's death. To Vaughan it meant simply the extinction
of all that made life worth living. Each foresaw an agony, but
the one foresaw it with a joy which no affection could subdue;
the other with a despair which even religion seemed powerless to
relieve. Before long silence became impossible. The decision of the
Cabinet was made known. Two strong and ardent natures, which since
boyhood had lived in and on one another, were forced to admit that a
separation, which might be eternal, "was nigh, even at the doors."
But there was this vital difference between the two cases--the
one had to act; the other only to endure.

On the 22nd of February, 1854, the Guards sailed from Southampton,
and on the 27th of March war between England and Russia was formally
declared.

* * * * *

The events of the next two years must be compressed into a few
lines. To the inseparable evils of war--bloodshed and sickness--were
added the horrors of a peculiarly cruel winter. Five-sixths of the
soldiers whom England lost died from preventable diseases, and
the want of proper food, clothing, and shelter. Bullets and cholera
and frost-bite did their deadly work unchecked. The officers had at
least their full share of the hardships and the fatalities. What
the Guards lost can be read on the walls of the Chapel at Wellington
Barracks and in the pedigrees of Burke's Peerage. For all England
it was a time of piercing trial, and of that hope deferred which
maketh the heart sick. No one ever knew what Vaughan endured, for he
as too proud to bare his soul. For two years he never looked at a
gazette, or opened a newspaper, or heard a Ministerial announcement
in the House of Commons, or listened to a conversation at his club,
without the sickening apprehension that the next moment he would
know that Arthur Grey was dead. Letters from Grey reached him from
time to time, but their brave cheerfulness did nothing to soothe
his apprehensions. For they were few and far between; postal
communication was slow and broken, and by the time a letter reached
him the hand which had penned it might be cold in death. Yet, in
spite of an apprehensive dread which had become a second nature
to Philip Vaughan, the fatal news lingered. Weeks lengthened into
months, and months into two years