The music of the bands was heard no more, promenades, rides, and drives were at an end now, and General Trecarrel's handsome London-made carriage, with its crimson-lined tiger-skin, the spoil of a splendid animal potted by Waller in the Siah Sung, had become, by the simple law of appropriation, the property of Ameen Oollah Khan for the use of his four wives. Denzil and Audley Trevelyan did not meet much on duty, as the latter was on the Staff, had little to do with parades, and nothing whatever with guards, pickets, or working parties. Puzzled by the Lamorna peerage story (as Sybil called it), a story so strange and unsupported by proper evidence, Denzil deemed that as yet perfect silence in the matter was his proper plan; thus he was coolly courteous to Audley, whose advances, made in consequence of the secret interest felt in Sybil, he rather repelled. Audley was sometimes in the mess-bungalow of the battalion to which the company of Denzil was attached; but his staff duties kept him much about the quarters of General Trecarrel, and consequently more in the society of Rose than Denzil quite relished. Since the day of the conference he had never once visited her, and thus he felt with intense bitterness that he had been quietly supplanted there by the son of one who had supplanted him at home in rank and title, and hence more than ever did he loathe the obligation--the debt of gratitude he owed to Audley for the service he had done to Sybil; and under all the circumstances in which he was placed, he felt the sense of it most oppressive. "And where is Sybil now?" thought Denzil, despondingly; "in what country, and with whom?" Who was the lady of rank she had referred to? No more letters could reach Cabul now, and months must elapse ere he heard from her again or learned her fate. No confidences passed between him and Audley; yet the latter, had he known of it, would have risked much to have perused her last epistle, with the single mention of his own name therein, and the current of thoughts it seemed to open up--thoughts to which he alone had the key. Denzil had a longing desire to do something brilliant, that he might shine in the estimation of Rose Trecarrel. With the combined vanity and diffidence natural to a young man, he sometimes flattered himself that his handsome uniform might regain him favour in her eyes, if no other merit, mental or physical, did so; but in that he reckoned without his host, for Rose was too much accustomed to see regimentals about her--the scarlet of the Queen's troops, the silver grey of the Indian cavalry, the blue and gold of the artillery, and the quaint, half-oriental splendour of the irregular horse. As a flirt she preferred the scarlet, and, perhaps, as one with an eye to a good marriage, the sombre black swallow-tail of the C.S.