But now the great event of having the society of Denzil made Rose, who had previously felt herself so friendless and forlorn, so desolate and lost, much more hopeful and contented; and something of her old coquetry came to the surface again, when daily he walked with her in the garden of the fort, as they were never permitted to go beyond its walls. They had both undergone much, and witnessed some frightful scenes; but it was with them there, as with those who dwell "in the countries where earthquakes are frequent, and where in almost every century some terrible convulsion has laid a whole city in ruins--the inhabitants acquire a strange indifference to peril till the very instant of its presence, and learn to forget calamities when once they have passed." CHAPTER XXV. MARRIED OR NOT? Under the magic influence of Rose's presence, Denzil felt almost content for the time, and his heart swelled with mingled love and joy; then obstacles would seem to give way, fears to fade, and he felt his heart endued with a new strength. The hope of rescue or the chances of escape together, formed a fertile and endless source of conversation and surmise for these two isolated beings; but Rose had to humour the Khan by playing chess with him whenever he requested her to do so, while his wife and daughters quite as frequently compelled Denzil, who knew Hindostanee, to read for them an Oriental poem of which they never seemed to grow weary. It was a handsome volume of exquisite Eastern penmanship; all the pages were perfumed, and no two of them were alike, all the vignettes of birds, of gilded mosques, of black-bearded emirs and bayaderes, the elaborate borders and chapter heads being radiant in colours and gold. It described the petrifaction of the City of Ishmonie, a place alleged to be in Upper Egypt, where all that were once animated beings were by an enchanter changed in an instant to stone, and where they may still be seen, in all the various positions of sitting, or standing, eating, sleeping or caressing each other--a legend which obviously arose from the circumstance of the vast number of statues of men, women, and children that are, or were, in the place; but this poem so palled upon Denzil that he shivered with weariness whenever the subject was named to him. And now as a certain assurance of safety came into the mind of Rose Trecarrel, she began to resume some of her old coquettish ways with him; thus one day as they were promenading in the garden of the Khan's fort, where the early flowers of Spring were maturing under the genial shelter of the high embattled walls, when he familiarly addressed her as "Rose," she said, with an assumed pout on her ruddy lips, "I must really forbid you to call me Rose--even here." "I called you so once, unchecked--by the lake, on that day which you must remember," he urged gently. "That day is past."