The same idea was in the heart of another, who was slowly approaching her, an officer in undress, with pith-helmet and loose white patrol jacket. He urged his horse close to Clare, and a little exclamation escaped her.
"Oh, fatality!" she murmured, on finding herself face to face with Fred Wilmot; and fatality it seemed indeed, that they should by chance have chosen the same hour and the same pathway, amid the many that diverged from the breathless cantonments. He sprang from his horse, and grasping the bridle with one hand, presented the other to her.
"Mrs. Thorne—Clare!" said he, in a broken voice, and as he uttered her name there came into his face a light, an almost divine tenderness, such as she had never seen in it, even in their sweet past time—the light of love, the joy of a great passion.
"I am Mrs. Thorne, and we must remember that now, Fred," said she; but without drawing back her hand. None was near but Chuttur Sing, who certainly thought he would not have liked to have seen his wife tête-à-tête with the sahib-logue, in that solitary place, for to the Bengalees the ease of European society is an enigma they fail to understand.
"Till I saw you yesterday, I knew not in what part of India you were," said Wilmot, with his gaze fixed eagerly upon her now pallid face, "and now they tell me that you are the wife of that man—our chaplain, a morose and gloomy fellow——"
"My husband, Mr. Wilmot," said Clare, now withdrawing her hand, and shortening her gathered reins.
"Mr. Wilmot!" he exclaimed, almost reproachfully.
"My husband!" she repeated, with sorrowful emphasis.
"I beg your pardon, Clare. I am not likely to forget the fact," said he, with deep dejection; "but changed though the relations—broken the tie—between us, may I not be still your friend? I—I," he continued, in a voice so pathetic that her soul was moved, "I who was once so much dearer than any friend could be?"
"We must forget all that—friends? No, it is impossible! Better not—better not—oh, what fatality sent you here!" she added, restraining with difficulty her tears, and aware that the black-beady eyes of Chuttur Sing were upon her—Chuttur Sing of the spindle legs and huge red turban.