It was close upon five o'clock of a cloudy April afternoon, and
the sun had been hidden all day. I saw my mistake as soon as the words were
out of my mouth: attempted to recover it; blundered hopelessly and followed
Kitty in a regal rage, out of doors, amid the smiles of my acquaintances. I
made some excuse (I have forgotten what) on the score of my feeling faint; and
cantered away to my hotel, leaving Kitty to finish the ride by herself.
In my room I sat down and tried calmly to reason out the matter.
Here was I, Theobald Jack Pansay, a well-educated Bengal Civilian in the year
of grace, 1885, presumably sane, certainly healthy, driven in terror from my
sweetheart's side by the apparition of a woman who had been dead and buried
eight months ago. These were facts that I could not blink. Nothing was further
from my thought than any memory of Mrs. Wessington when Kitty and I left
Hamilton's shop. Nothing was more utterly commonplace than the stretch of wall
opposite Peliti's. It was broad daylight. The road was full of people; and yet
here, look you, in defiance of every law of probability, in direct outrage of
Nature's ordinance, there had appeared to me a face from the grave.
Kitty's Arab had gone through the 'rickshaw: so that my first hope that some
woman marvelously like Mrs.
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