Rose had now gladly relinquished the Afghan female dress. Amid the plentiful supply of plunder of every kind gleaned up by the Kuzzilbashes in the track of the retreating army, were several overlands bullock-trunks and portmanteaus filled with clothing. Among these, some of which had doubtless belonged to her own lady friends, Rose was fain to make selections; thus, one evening in June, when the sun was setting behind the black mountains, throwing across the broad green valley where the Cabul winds, their shadows to where the old cantonments lay, and tipping with fire the conical hill that overhangs the distant city, while Denzil, who had been dosing uneasily on his hard native bed, was looking with a haggard eye about him, he saw Rose seated near, at an open window, on a low divan, dressed in a most becoming fashion, and consequently looking much more like her former self. And as his bed, in the usual Afghan fashion, lay simply on the floor, which had no covering but a _satringee_, or piece of cotton carpet, he could see the whole of her handsome figure, as she reclined a cheek upon her dimpled hand, showing one lovely taper arm bare to the white elbow, while alternately idling over the pages of a European book and furtively watching him, as he had slept, lulled over by the drowsy hum of myriad insects at the open casement, and among the brilliantly flowered creepers that clambered round it, a sound like the murmur of distant water, or of the wind in an ocean shell, but very suggestive of heat, of lassitude, and repose; yet Denzil, though he had slept, felt more weary than ever. "Rose," said he, faintly. "Dear Denzil--you are awake again, my poor pet; you sleep but by snatches," said the girl, closing her book and sinking on her knees beside his pillow, which, with ready and gentle hands, she noiselessly rearranged. "I have been thinking, Rose--that--that----" he paused. "What? Do not exert yourself." "That my presence must be full of peril to you!" "To me---how?" "This illness may be an infectious one." "I scarcely think so, Denzil; and if it were," she added, with a smile of inexpressible tenderness, "if it were--what then?" "It might seize on you, darling Rose. Let one of those Kuzzilbash fellows attend me; their lives are of no consequence, while yours----" "Is of value only to myself." "And to me, Rose--to me; how unkind!" He raised himself feebly on his elbow, and gazed at her with eyes expressive of love and admiration. "Why, Rose, how well you are looking this evening--quite a belle too, or a 'swell,' if one may speak slang," said he, with affected cheerfulness. "And you, too, Denzil," said she in the same manner, kindly assumed, but with an arrested sob in her throat, for she saw that in reality he was more and more wasted, hollow-cheeked, and large-eyed than ever, and that the tendons of his hands stood sharply out in ridges, distinct to the eye, quite like those of an old man.