With a morbid eagerness she recalled the play of
feeling between them, before that mad evening at Hamel Weir. What
perpetual excitement--no time to think--or regret!
During her weeks of illness she had lost all count of his movements. Had
he been still writing during the summer for the newspaper which had sent
him out? Had there not been rumors of his being wounded--or attacked by
fever? Her memory, still vague and weak, struggled painfully with
memories it could not recapture.
The Italian paper of that morning--she had spelled it out for herself at
breakfast--had spoken of a defeat of the insurrectionary forces, and of
their withdrawal into the highlands of Bosnia. There would be a lull in
the fighting. Would he come home? And all this time had he been the mere
spectator and reporter, or fighting, himself? Her pulses leaped as she
thought of him leading down-trodden peasants against the Turk.
But she knew nothing. Surely during the last few months he had purposely
made a mystery of his doings and his whereabouts. The only sign of him
which seemed to have reached England had been that volume of poems--with
those hateful lines! Her lip quivered.
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