Poor Clare repined bitterly and wept profusely, but not for the first time in her life, and her husband, who knew that all Mirzapatam was on tip-toe about the forbidden ball, eyed her with a lowering expression. But he knew that he must exert his authority, or scandals might ensue, and he felt that Wilmot must cross his threshold no more. Indeed, the ball-tickets were returned to him, and when next he visited the abode of Mr. Thorne, that gentleman, who never did things by halves, and who deemed he had a duty to perform to religion, to himself, and society, gave the young officer a pretty distinct hint that his visits could be dispensed with, and Fred retired, his heart swollen with rage, mortification, and sorrow.
Shame and anger mingled with the sorrow of Clare. How tiresome of him to go on this way to her in their present abode, of all places in the world! Scandal—the thing he dreaded—would be sure to come of it. A great gloom now fell upon Clare, and the ball—girl-like—the forbidden ball rankled in her heart; Thorne supposed this gloom was caused by the banishment of Wilmot only; but that had merely something to do with it.
Was she, that he loved and trusted, wronging him cruelly in her heart? Was he nursing a traitress in his bosom? Sooth to say, the hitherto placid and plodding Cecil Thorne began to think, and sometimes say, all manner of desperate things to his scared and shrinking little wife, whose changed manner he attributed to Wilmot's influence, and he cursed the hour that ever the new regiment marched into Mirzapatam.
Loving his wife as he did, he would rather have seen her lying in her grave and himself reading the burial service over her, than living as a disgraced woman. Then, if there was great sorrow, there would be no shame, and she would be gone where never more dishonour could menace, or shame assail her.
"Clare, child," said he, "my little wife is my all to me. The soul that sinneth shall pay the wages of sin."
"But I have not sinned!" she exclaimed, passionately.
"As yet," said he, pointedly and coldly; "thank Heaven, my eyes were opened in time! Think of what would be my misery and our conjoint dishonour—I, a priest of the Church! Think of how our once happy home might have been desecrated and the bitterness of a love that is slighted!"
"You make too much or too little of all this!"
"I do not!"
"Oh, Cecil—Cecil—my dear husband—I have no forgiveness to ask of you; I only seek your pity."