"Sir Anthony and her ladyship will tell you, sir. They're in the
morning room."

So I was shewn into the morning room--a noble square room with
French windows, looking on to the wintry garden, and with a log
fire roaring up a great chimney. On one side of the fire sat Sir
Anthony, and on the other, Lady Fenimore. And both were crying. He
rose as he saw me--a short, crop-haired, clean-shaven, ruddy,
jockey-faced man of fifty-five, the corners of his thin lips,
usually curled up in a cheery smile, now piteously drawn down, and
his bright little eyes now dim like those of a dead bird. She,
buxom, dark, without a grey hair in her head, a fine woman defying
her years, buried her face in her hands and sobbed afresh.

"It's good of you to come, old man," said Sir Anthony, "but you're
in it with us."

He handed me a telegram. I knew, before reading it, what message
it contained. I had known, all along, but dared not confess it to
myself.

"I deeply regret to inform you that your son, Lieutenant Oswald
Fenimore, was killed in action yesterday while leading his men
with the utmost gallantry."

I had known him since he was a child. By reason of my wife's
kinship, I was "Uncle Duncan." He was just one and twenty, but a
couple of years out of Sandhurst. Only a week before I had
received an exuberant letter from him extolling his men as "super-
devil-angels," and imploring me if I loved him and desired to