"'On what?' I asked sulkily.
"'Your appointment to the Buffs. The Gazette has just come from town. They are stationed at Jubbulpore.'
"And so it proved that the very day I lost her saw me in the service, with India, and a far and final separation before us. Necessity compelled us to prepare for an almost instant departure; short leave was given me by the adjutant-general; and I had to join the Candahar transport going with drafts from Chatham for the East, on a certain day.
"Rumours reached me of Eve being seriously ill. She was secluded from me, and there was every chance that I should see her no more. A letter came from her imploring me to meet her for the last time at a spot known to us both—a green lane that led to a churchyard stile—the scene of many a tender tryst and blissful hour, as it was a place where overhanging trees, with the golden apple, the purple damson, and the plum, formed a very bower, and where few or none ever came, save on Sunday; and there we met for the last time!
"There once again her head lay on my shoulder, my circling arm was round her, and her hot, tremulous hand was clasped in mine. I was shocked by the change I perceived in her. Painful was her pallor to look upon; there were circles dark as her lashes under her sad, melancholy eyes; her nostrils and lips were unnaturally pink; she had a short, dry cough; and blood appeared more than once upon her handkerchief.
"Consumption on one hand, and parental tyranny on the other, were fast doing their fatal work.
"Her father was pitiless and inexorable—wonderfully, infamously so, as he was so rich that mere money was no object, and as she was his only child, and one so tender, and so fragile. His studied system of deliberate 'worry' had wrung a consent from her; she was to marry the old judge; and in more ways than one I felt that too surely I was losing her for ever. She could not go out with me. I felt desperate, and in silence folded her again and again to my breast. At last the ting-tong of the old church clock announced the hour when we must part, never to meet again, and the fatal sound struck us like a shock of electricity.
"'Jack, my dearest—my dearest,' she whispered wildly; 'I don't think I shall live very long now. I may—nay, I must, die very soon; but the spirit is imperishable, and I shall always be with you, wherever you may be, wherever you may go, hovering near you, I hope, like a guardian angel!'
"Her words struck me as strange and wild; I did not attach much importance to them then, but they have had a strange and terrible significance since.
"'Would you welcome me?' she asked, with a mournful smile.