Yet she hoped much. He gave her valuable advice, and the Khanum, too, and promised to return without delay, and with certain prescriptions, made up from his little store kept in Cabul for the few wounded soldiers who were hostages there. He rode off, and Rose's blessings and gratitude went with him. No curiosity as to the relations of the nurse and patient--peculiar though their circumstances--prompted a question from the doctor. That Rose should attend the sick officer seemed only humane and natural. Who other so suitable was nigh? And to find one more European--a friend especially--surviving, was source of pleasure enough! The doctor retired; but, instead of hours, days went by, and he returned no more; for on the very evening of his visit he was seized and despatched, with all the rest, under Saleh Mohammed, to Toorkistan. In another place the doctor was thus enabled to be of much value to Mabel Trecarrel, and _en route_ towards the desert did much to alleviate her sufferings, and restore her health; but the assurance he gave her that he had seen her sister and Denzil Devereaux too, and that they were safe--perfectly safe--in the powerful protection of Shireen Khan, did more to this end than all his prescriptions. But his advice ultimately availed but little the patient he left behind, for Denzil grew worse--sank more and more daily; he had but the superstition and follies or quackery of Abu Malec to interpose between him and eternity. Terribly was Rose sensible of all this, as she sat and watched by the young man's bedside in that desolate room of the fort; for it was intensely desolate and comfortless, an Afghan noble's ideas of luxury and splendour being inferior to those possessed by an English groom. Save the bed on which he lay, two European chairs and a trunk brought from the plunder of the cantonments, it was as destitute of furniture as the cell of a prison; and, as if in such a cell, daily the square outline of the window was seen to fall with the yellow sunshine on the same part of the wall, and thence pass upward obliquely as the sun went round, till it faded away at the corner, and then next day it appeared again, without change.