Imagine Clara’s agitations during this long suspense; her plans and hopes and despairs would furnish matter for a library.  There was not a day, if indeed there was an hour, during which her mind was not the theatre of a dozen dramas whereof Thurstane was the hero, either triumphant or perishing.  They were horribly fragmentary; they broke off and pieced on to each other like nightmares; one moment he was rescued, and the next tomahawked.  And this last fancy, despite all her struggles to hope, was for the most part victorious.  Meantime Coronado, guessing her sufferings, and suffering horribly himself with jealousy, talked much and sympathetically to her of Thurstane.  So much did this man bear, and with such outward sweetness did he bear it, that one half longs to consider him a martyr and saint.  Pity that his goodness should not bear dissection; that it should have no more life in it than a stuffed mannikin; that it should be just fit to scare crows with.

But hypocrite as Coronado was, he was clever enough to win every day more of Clara’s confidence; and perhaps she might have walked into this whited sepulchre in due time had it not been for an accident.  Cantering into San Francisco to hold a consultation with her lawyer, she was saluted in the street by a United States officer, also on horseback.  She instinctively drew rein, her pulse throbbing at sight of the uniform, and wild hopes beating at her heart.

“Miss Van Diemen, I believe,” said the officer, a dark, stout, bold-looking trooper.  “I am glad to see that you reached here in safety.  You have forgotten me.  I am Major Robinson.”

“I remember,” said Clara, who had not recollected him at first because she was looking solely for Thurstane.  “You passed us in the desert.”

“Yes, I took your soldiers away from you, and you declined my escort.  I was anxious about you afterwards.  Well, it has ended right in spite of me.  Of course you have heard of Thurstane’s escape.”

“Escape!” exclaimed Clara, her face turning scarlet and then pale.  “Oh! tell me!”

The major stared.  He had guessed a love affair between these two; he had inferred it in the desert from the girl’s anxiety about the young man.  How came it that she knew nothing of the escape?

“So I have heard,” he went on.  “I think there can be no mistake about it.  I learned it from a civilian who left Fort Yuma some weeks ago.  I don’t think he could have been mistaken.  He told me that the lieutenant was there then.  Not well, I am sorry to say; rather broken down by his hardships.  Oh, nothing serious, you know.  But he was a trifle under the weather, which may account for his not letting his friends hear from him.”

At the story that Thurstane was alive, all Clara’s love had arisen as if from a grave, and the mightier because of its resurrection.  She was full of self-reproaches.  It seemed to her that she had neglected him; that she had cruelly left him to die.  Why had she not guessed that he was sick there, and flown to nurse him to health?  What had he thought of her conduct?  She must go to him at once.