Chapter XXVII

The days went on, and to Mrs. Otway's surprise
and bitter disappointment, there came no answer
to the letter she had written to the German surgeon.
She had felt so sure that he would write again very
soon -- if not exactly by return, then within a week or
ten days.

The only people she told were Major Guthrie's
solicitor, Robert Allen, and her daughter. But though
both, in their different ways, sympathised with her
deeply, neither of them could do anything to help her.
Rather against her will, Mr. Allen wrote and informed
his client of Mrs. Guthrie's death, asking for instructions
concerning certain urgent business matters.
But even that letter did not draw any answer from the
Field Lazarette.

As for Rose, she soon gave up asking if another
letter had come, and to Mrs. Otway's sore heart it was
as if the girl, increasingly absorbed in her own not
always easy problem of keeping Jervis happy under
the painful handicap of his present invalid condition,
had no time to spare for that of anyone else. Poor
Rose often felt that she would give, as runs the old
saying, anything in the world to have her man to herself,
as a cottage wife would have had hers by now -- with
no nurses, no friends, no doctor even, save perhaps
for a very occasional visit.

But Mrs. Otway was not fair to Rose; in never
mentioning Major Guthrie and the terrible misfortune

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v?