From a seat by one of the drivers there jumped
down Sir John Blake. He looked round him with a
keen glance, and then made his way straight to where
his wife was standing. Taking no notice of her, he
addressed the girl standing by her side. "Is this
Rose," he said -- "Rose Otway?" and taking her hand
gripped it hard. "He's borne the journey very well,"
he said quickly, reassuringly; and then, at last, he
looked at his wife. She was gazing at him with
imploring, anxious eyes. "Well," he said impatiently,
"well, my dear, what is it you want to say to me?"

She murmured something nervously, and Rose hurriedly
said, "Lady Blake wants to know where Jervis
was wounded."

"A fragment of shell struck his left arm -- but the
real mischief was done to his right leg. When the
building in which he and his company were resting
was shelled, a beam fell on it. I should have thought
myself that it would have been better to have kept
him, for at any rate a while, at Boulogne. But they
now think it wiser, if it be in any way possible, to
bring them straight back."

Rose hardly heard what he said. She was absorbed
in wondering which of the stretchers now being
brought out of the ambulances bore the form of Jervis
Blake; but she accepted, with a quiet submission which
increased the great surgeon's already good opinion of
her, his decree that no one excepting himself and his
nurses was to see or speak to any of the wounded that
night.

[[245]]

p244 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p245w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p246

v?