He desires me to say
with his love that the best turn you ever did him was putting young
Kendal into the 25th. Tell your husband that I congratulate him on
his son's conduct, and am afraid that his promotion without purchase
is only too certain. Gilbert's only message was his love. Speaking
seems to give him pain, and he is altogether more prostrated than so
slight a wound accounts for; but when I saw him, he had just been
told of the death of his colonel and several of his brother officers,
among them young Wynne, who shared his tent; and he was completely
overcome. There is, however, no cause for uneasiness; he had not
even been aware that he was hurt, until he fainted while Fred was
under the surgeon's hands, and was then found to have an ugly
contusion of the chest, and a fracture of the uppermost rib on the
left side. A few days' rest will set all that to rights, and I
expect to see him on horseback before we can ship poor Fred for
Scutari. In the meantime they are both in Fred's tent, which is
fairly comfortable.'
Albinia understood whence came Gilbert's heroism. He had charged at
first, as he had hunted with Maurice, because there was no doing
otherwise, and in the critical moment the warm heart had done the
rest, and equalled constitutional courage: but then, she saw the
gentle tender spirit sinking under the slight injury, and far more at
the suffering of his friend, the deadly havoc among his comrades, and
his own share in the carnage.
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