She fronted him for a few seconds, watching his wondering face, hesitating, blushing, and laughing. Suddenly she bounded forward, threw her arms around his shoulders and cried excitedly, hysterically, "My love! my husband! all this is yours. Oh, how happy I am!"
The next moment she burst into tears on the shoulder to which she was clinging.
"What is the matter?" demanded Thurstane in some alarm; for he did not know that women can tremble and weep with gladness, and he thought that surely his wife was sick if not deranged.
"What! don't you guess it?" she asked, drawing back with a little more calmness, and looking tenderly into his puzzled eyes.
"You don't mean—?"
"Yes, darling."
"It can't be that—?"
"Yes, darling."
He began to comprehend the trick that had been played upon him, although as yet he could not fully credit it. What mainly bewildered him was that Clara, whom he had always supposed to be as artless as a child—Clara, whom he had cared for as an elder and a father—should have been able to keep a secret and devise a plot and carry out a mystification.
"Great —— Scott!" he gasped in his stupefaction, using the name of the then commander-in-chief for an oath, as officers sometimes did in those days.