'If a woman can't deceive her own husband, whom may she deceive!' asked the unwise brigadier.
'In the days of the pistol this matter would not have ended here.'
'Come, come, don't let you and I fall to carte and tierce in this fashion,' said the general; 'it may be explainable——'
'I want no explanations!'
'As you please. It seems there is a little romance in most lives——'
'With your grey hairs you should have outlived all that, I think.'
Now his years proved a sore point with old Sir Bevis, and he became inflamed with anger; but, ere he could retort, Duncan had jerked his sword under his left arm and swept from his presence with a rather withering expression in his face, and that very evening saw Alice in the train for Delhi, en route to Europe.
'Innocent, I suffer all the shame and all the agony of guilt! Oh, it is hard, Duncan—very, very hard,' were the last words she said, brokenly, to her husband, who heard her with a stern silence that astonished her.
Now that Lady Batardeau, on her return to the cantonments, had explained the whole story of the ring, Duncan was—when too late, for his wife was on the sea—full of shame and contrition for his suspicions and severity, and had written to crave the pardon of Alice and insure her return to him again; hence the farewell and departure of 'Mrs. Cameron,' with her overlands and other baggage, as witnessed by the sharp little eyes of Sir Paget Puddicombe at the Waverley Station, and thus it was that, by an unexplained mistake, two fond hearts were separated for ever; but separated they would have been eventually by fate or fortune—the lack of fortune, rather—as time may show.
But for a time poor Eveline had to ponder bitterly on the humiliating thought that Evan Cameron had been thinking of another face, form, and name while in the act of caressing herself, and that the other was—as Sir Paget had left them no reason to doubt, and never himself doubted—Evan Cameron's wife!