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." "I _do_ pity you," he replied, grimly, and thought the while, "She can speak to me thus--with that fellow's kisses fresh upon her lips!" For he had undefined suspicions that Wilmot saw her yet, from time to time. "How tiresome--how absurd is this jealousy!" thought Clare; yet her own conscience told her it was neither absurd nor mistaken _now_; and all this passed on the night of the forbidden ball! CHAPTER IV. Mr. Thorne's suspicions were right; they _had_ been meeting, without design at first; ample though the cantonment, how could it be otherwise? "Dear, good Fred," she said, one day, as they met among the baubool trees near an old ruined tomb--the tomb of Abu Mirza--"I want you to help me--you alone can do so." "In what way?" he asked, looking at her in his old tender manner. "To be good and proper--to keep in the straight path of propriety, and avoid all chance of scandal." "You are quoting some sermon of Thorne's now." "I am not--I mean it; we must speak no more; _will_ you help me?" "Yes," said he, in a choking voice; "yes--if I can," and his mode of beginning was pressing her to his heart, and covering her face with kisses.