She had become composed and calm during the past months; but now the proffered relics brought so vividly and painfully before her the individuality of the dead, the handsome young husband she had lost, that a heavy outburst of anguish was the result, as all expected.
There were rings, each of which had its own story; a miniature of herself, with a lock of her auburn hair behind it; there were his medals and his Victoria cross, gained by an act of bravery among the hills, his sword and sash: all were kissed with quivering lips, commented on, and wept over again and again, not noisily or obstreperously, but with a quiet, gentle, subdued, and ladylike grief that proved very touching, especially in one so young and so beautiful in her deep crape dress; and Trevor Chute, as he observed all this, began to think that even yet his friend Vane's chances of regaining the widow's heart were of the slightest kind.
'I knew, Trevor Chute,' said she, after a pause, 'that I should never, never see him again!'
'How?' he asked.
'Because in the dawn of that morning when—when he died, I dreamt of him, and he showed me the ring you have brought—the gipsy ring I gave him, broken in two, as it now is.'
'The tiger's teeth did that.'
'It is true,' said Clare. 'She was sleeping with me, and started up in tears and agitation to tell me of her dream and of the ring.'
Trevor Chute's mind went back to that time when the pale face of the dead man looked so sad in the half-darkened bungalow, while the drums beat merrily in the square without; the last words of Beverley came back to him, and could it be, as he had often said, that he and Ida were indeed en rapport, and had a spiritual and unseen link between them?
It began to seem so now.
Then, fearing that his visit was somewhat protracted, he rose, yet lingeringly, to go.