"Oh--you speak to me kindly--almost tenderly, do you?" said Denzil, with bitterness in his tone; "have you obtained leave from your friend on the Staff to address me!" He looked at her with eyes in whose expression anger and sorrow mingled, while she looked at him smiling and deprecatory, more than half flattered by his jealous outburst amid the terrors that menaced them all. "You are surely in a frightful humour this morning," said she; "I shall certainly pity the Afghans if you fall foul of any of them." "Cold-hearted Rose," replied Denzil, who was in no humour for jesting; "I would not have your ungenerous nature, to hold that title of which, as yet, fate deprives me, though that might make you love me again--even if you ever loved me at all." "Is this a comedy, Denzil?" said she, smiling more than ever. "I would to God we had never met," said Denzil in a low voice, while his lip quivered, for he conceived that the secret story of his family had affected her towards him; "you have been but amusing yourself with me; passing the hours that would have been dull here, in playing with my heart--my feelings." "Why, Denzil Devereaux--you talk like a girl; who ever heard of a man's heart or feelings being trifled with?" said she, with a little silvery laugh as she moved her horse, to speak with some one else. "Dear Mabel," said Waller in a tender and earnest voice, as his _fiancée_ checked her Arab for a moment by his side, and gave him her hand with a bright confiding smile; "to-day begins, I hope, the first stage of our long homeward journey." "'England, with all thy faults, I love thee still,'" said she, laughing as she rejoined her sister, and her lover, who was somewhat of a critic, thought she was the handsomest girl he had ever seen on horseback. Bob and Mabel had already begun to fashion mental pictures of a home-life in England, a happy home, a dream life; a pretty house in some sequestered spot, where the old Cornish elm trees might echo to merry children's voices, while the days went by in peace and happiness; but here the troops were called to "attention," and General Trecarrel, who was "mounted," led his daughters to where the advanced guard was posted, and where all the ladies were placed among the cavalry, to the great delight of a couple of cornets who complacently stroked the fair fluff that would in time become moustaches, and begged them not to be in the least alarmed, as they had a most efficient escort. "Rose," urged Mabel, who had more power of character than her sister and less of folly in her disposition, "it is cruel of you to make such a victim of that poor lad, Devereaux--he is so handsome too." "That is the reason; but do I ask him to love me?" "No; you only lure him into doing so; you are incorrigible, and laugh at being so." "There is no need to think of marrying--the idea is absurd; though one may get up a liking." "Oh fie!" said Mabel, smiling in spite of herself.