Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/60

 corpse, and speak with the voice of a lost spirit. He might be wounded — he must be wounded, since blood-stains were on his hands and clothes, but no pain could have changed him as he was changed, this soldier whom her soldier-husband loved.

"Oh, sir, my poor Colonel!" she exclaimed, going back to the old name she had known so well when she had been only Tom's sweetheart. "If only Tom were here to help you. He's gone to London, on business for Mrs. Forestier, but he'll be back — he may be back almost any minute now. Tell me what I can do, till he comes. Tell me what's the matter."

Sir Ian grew more calm, though the sunken eyes in the ashen face looked no less like the eyes of a dead man.

"Send little Poppet away," he said. "I — I'm sorry I frightened her. I didn't mean"

"Oh, sir, it's nothing. She's so sensitive. She'll be all right. Run, darling, into the kitchen, and wait there till Mummy comes. Sir Ian's in great trouble. Run; and you may get yourself a ginger-nut out of the stone jar."

"I don't want ginger-nut," whimpered the child. And then, bursting into loud sobbing, she darted away toward the kitchen, like one of the rabbits she loved, released from a trap.

"My wife — dead. Killed." The words came jerkily from lips stiff as if frozen.