"No--oh no--let us return separate," said she, nervously, and they parted, she urging her horse at a hand-gallop back to the arid plain, where the lines of Mirzapatam were now quivering, and to all appearance vibrating, in the hot rays of the uprisen sun. So when Fred Wilmot called that evening at the Rev. Mr. Thorne's bungalow, he was cordially received by that gentleman, and by his wife politely, as a--stranger! Clad in a thin dress, through which her delicate arms and the contour of her bosom were apparent, she was reclining in a long-armed Indian cane chair, with all her dark-brown hair cast loose over her back and shoulders, just as her ayah had left it for coolness; and very charming and girlish she looked, especially when her colour heightened. The fragrant odour of the recently wetted _tatties_, or window-screens, pervaded a large uncarpeted drawing-room. An hour and more was passed in pleasant conversation. No reference whatever _could_ be made to the past, so from that hour each of those _two_ felt that the game of duplicity was beginning. The piano--which had its feet immersed in saucers of water to save it from creeping insects--was more than once resorted to; and Mr. Thorne was surprised to find how many airs and duets his wife and the new comer knew in common. He could little dream how often they had practised them _together_, in that sweet Kentish village so long ago, it seemed now. That night Fred Wilmot slept little. He had more than the mosquitos to keep him awake, while in the verandah without the _wallah_ pulled drowsily at the cord of the punkah. "Innocent, pure and artless as ever--poor Clare--poor darling!" thought he; "oh, what avail my money and position now--now that she is that sombre fellow's wife--yet all men speak well of him here. What are her dark eyes, her rich hair, her sweet English beauty to me now!" CHAPTER III. Clare Thorne's life had been so dull, that one can scarcely wonder if she found the advent of Wilmot at the cantonment, and his visits, most welcome, though they filled her with a vague alarm--an undefined fear of violating trust and propriety. We have said that the Thornes had few visitors; this arose from the distaste the chaplain had of society and the general gravity of his demeanour; but Fred Wilmot cared little for all that; it was not him he came to see. No thought of evil was in the innocent heart of Clare; nor was there in the heart of Wilmot, to do him justice, though he abandoned himself to the perilous charm of seeking the society of the girl who once loved him so well--from whom he had been separated, and who felt with him in common "that _death_ in life, the days that are no more." A little time the regiment would be moving further up country, and all would then be at an end. Meanwhile both were playing with edged tools!