"Oh yes--yes; one who has been so good to me, could not fail to be good to her, and to love her for her own sake--for mine perhaps." And then Denzil would look half vacantly, half wildly up to the ceiling, and marvel hopefully yet apprehensively in his heart where was now that homeless sister, so loved and petted at Porthellick, and whom we last saw crouching by the old cottage door near the stone avenue, on that morning when her mother died, and when the cold grey mist was rolling from the purple moorland along the green slopes of the Row Tor and Bron Welli. Alas! her story Denzil knew not, and might never, never, know it. But he was beginning now to know and to feel that "the God who was but a dim and awful abstraction before" seemed very close and nigh. No fear was in his heart, however: he was very calm and courageous, save when he thought of Rose's future, and how lonely and lost she should be when he was gone. This reflection alone brought tears from him; it wrung his heart, and made him the more keenly desire to live. No Bible or Book of Common Prayer had Rose wherewith to console either the sufferer or herself; all such had gone at the plunder of the cantonments and the baggage, and had likely figured as cartridge paper at Jugdulluck and Tizeen; but no printed or hackneyed formulæ could equal in depth or earnestness the silent yet heartfelt prayers she put up for Denzil and herself. "My poor Denzil--poor boy! I never deserved that you should love me so much: I have thought so a thousand times!" Rose would whisper fervently, and, heedless of any danger from fever, and perhaps courting it, place his brow caressingly in her neck, and kiss his temples, as if he were a child, telling him to "take courage, and have no fear." "Fear! why should I fear death, Rose?" he would respond, speaking quickly, yet with difficulty--speaking thus perhaps to accustom himself to the topic, or to accustom her, we know not which; "why should I fear death, since I know not what it is? Why fear that which no human being can avert or avoid, and which so many better, braver, and nobler than I have so lately proved and tested in yonder Passes?--aye, Rose, my mother too, at home--my father on the sea--Sybil perhaps--all!" Then his utterance became incoherent, his voice broken, and Rose felt as if her heart were broken too; for when he spoke thus, there spread over his young face a wondrous brightness, a great calm; and the girl held her breath, in fear, if not awe, for she read there an expression of peace that denoted the end was near. All was very still in the great square Afghan fort and in the Khan's garden without.