The blow must have fallen upon Malvina as heavily as it was
unexpected. Without a word, without one backward look, she seems to
have departed. One pictures the white, frozen face, the wide-open,
unseeing eyes, the trembling, uncertain steps, the groping hands,
the deathlike silence clinging like grave-clothes round about her.
From that night the fairy Malvina disappears from the book of the
chroniclers of the White Ladies of Brittany, from legend and from
folklore whatsoever. She does not appear again in history till the
year A.D. 1914.
II. HOW IT CAME ABOUT.
It was on an evening towards the end of June, 1914, that Flight
Commander Raffleton, temporarily attached to the French Squadron
then harboured at Brest, received instructions by wireless to return
at once to the British Air Service Headquarters at Farnborough, in
Hampshire. The night, thanks to a glorious full moon, would afford
all the light he required, and young Raffleton determined to set out
at once. He appears to have left the flying ground just outside the
arsenal at Brest about nine o'clock. A little beyond Huelgoat he
began to experience trouble with the carburettor. His idea at first
was to push on to Lannion, where he would be able to secure expert
assistance; but matters only getting worse, and noticing beneath him
a convenient stretch of level ground, he decided to descend and
attend to it himself.
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