"Come, shake
hands; it is to you I owe my happiness chiefly."
"Isobel, my dear, give me a kiss," the Doctor exclaimed. "I am glad,
my dear, I am glad with all my heart. And what have you settled
besides that?"
"We have settled that I am to go home as soon as I can go down
country, and he is going up with you and the others to Cawnpore."
"That is right," the Doctor said heartily. "I told you that was
what he would decide upon; it is right that he should do so. No
man ought to turn his face to the coast till Lucknow is relieved
and Delhi is captured. I thank God it has all come right at last.
I began to be afraid that Bathurst's wrong headedness was going to
mar both your lives."
The news had already come down that Havelock had found that it
would be absolutely impossible with the small force at his command
to fight his way into Lucknow through the multitude of foes that
surrounded it, and that he must wait until reinforcements arrived.
There was, therefore, no urgent hurry, and it was not until ten
days later that a second troop of volunteer horse, composed of
civilians unable to resume their duties, and officers whose regiments
had mutinied, started for Cawnpore.
Half an hour before they mounted, Isobel Hannay and Ralph Bathurst
were married by the chaplain in the fort. This was at Bathurst's
earnest wish.
"I may not return, Isobel," he had urged: "it is of no use to blink
the fact that we have desperate fighting before us, and I should
go into battle with my mind much more easy in the knowledge that,
come what might, you were provided for.
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