"
This cheerfulness did not quite deceive Lord Evelyn. He bade his friend
good-night with some sadness; his mind was not at ease about the share
he attributed to himself in this calamity.
When Brand reached his chambers in Buckingham Street there was a small
parcel awaiting him. He opened it, and found a box with, inside, a tiny
nosegay of sweet-smelling flowers. These were not half as splendid as
those he had got the previous afternoon for the rooms in Hans Place, but
there was something accompanying them that gave them sufficient value.
It was a strip of paper, and on it was written--"From Natalie and from
Natalushka, with more than thanks."
"I will carry them with me," he thought to himself, "until the day of my
death. Perhaps they may not have quite withered by then."
CHAPTER XLII.
A COMMUNICATION.
Now, he said to himself, he would think no more; he would act. The long
talk with Lord Evelyn had enabled him to pull himself together; there
would be no repetition of that half-hysterical collapse. More than one
of his officer-friends had confessed to him that they had spent the
night before their first battle in abject terror, but that that had all
gone off as soon as they were called into action.
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