"Trust me--trust me," he whispered in her ear.
"I will trust you--I will, Freddy!" she replied, choked in tears.
"My own darling--to be my own at last---and after _all_!"
Clare knew what scandal and gossip were in England; but "gup" in India was fiercer, deeper, more trumpet-tongued, and already in fancy she saw every public print teeming with the story of her elopement and her husband's shame.
"He thinks too much of the other world to care much for this, or me!" she thought; but in that she wronged Thorne, who loved her dearly and devotedly, though in a cold and undemonstrative way, while Wilmot was all passion and energy.
"Oh, the scandal--the scandal we shall give!" said she, wringing her hands.
"Scandals die!" said he; "the world goes too fast now-a-days for anything--even for a wonder---to live long; and we shall seek a land where none shall know our names or the miserable story of our past."
"Oh, Fred!" wailed the girl, "I was brought up by my mother, in the careful avoidance of all evil, all that was sinful and unholy; and now I am sinking into an ocean of unholiness in loving you, better than I love my own soul!"
"Do not thus upbraid yourself, my innocent darling," said he, in a quiet but passionate tone.
"Innocent? Oh, my God! who will call me innocent, good, or pure to-morrow? Yet, the life I bear maddens me."
"That life will soon be a thing of the past. I am wealthy now, my darling; the bar that poverty put between us is removed. I can give you a home like a palace, in any part of Europe, far, far away from this breathless India; and once my wife----"
"My darling---I will give you all the love a human heart can render you--the dearest of love and a new life."
"But not with that which makes life alone worth having."
He regarded her passionately, anxiously, and entreatingly.
She felt that if she hesitated--deliberated--she would be lost, and must become, in any land, even though unknown, a social outlaw, a virtual outcast. All this rushed upon her mind, though she said it not, and with all its minor details of mortification and bitterness, as she lay with her face hidden on the breast of Wilmot.
He smiled fondly, yet sadly, down upon her bent head, and clasped her trembling fingers in his stronger hands, and turning up her white and desperate little face, he dared, in the excess and blindness of his passion, to call on heaven to hear that she would never have cause to regret the step she was about to take.