“Married!” repeated the girl in a startled voice.
“Why not? His family is growing up—he has a son in the service; his eldest girl is twenty. She is called after his first wife. His first wife—poor young thing!—was killed in the Mutiny, massacred on the Bhogulpore road. Was it not sad?” she added, in a hard, emotionless voice.
“Very, very sad!” said Honor, in a totally different tone.
“I have no name, no people, no friend.”
“You will let me be your friend?”—pressing her hand sympathetically.
“What is your name, my child?”
“Honor Gordon.”
“Honor—a fine name! You would have laid down your life—I saw it in your eyes. Alas, I never was brave, I never could bear pain. Life was sweet—any life, not death; anything but a sharp, horrible, violent death! Oh, if death was but a painless sleeping out of life, how many of us would leave it!”
“And what is your name?” inquired the girl in her turn.
“Nussiband.”