"Rose--oh Rose," he would say, "it can't be true all that Jack Polwhele said, and Harry Burgoyne, of the 37th, too--but they are dead, poor fellows!--and Grahame, and Ravelstoke, and ever so many more." "What did they say, Denzil?" "That you flirted with them all--oh, no, no, no! And then there is my cousin Audley--if indeed he is my cousin," he added, through his chattering teeth, "he cannot love you as I love you! He must have made a fool of many a girl in his time, while I--I love but you--even as I told you on that day by the lake, when you--you said--what did she say?--ask her, Sybil," he would add, looking up vacantly, yet earnestly; and then the conscience of the listener would be stirred to find that her thoughtless follies were remembered at such a time. "In his soul, he doubts me still," she thought. "My poor Denzil, I was only flirting, as most girls do. It was only fun," she added, aloud. "Yes, I am poor, and junior in rank, I know," he replied, catching a new idea from her words, "too poor for her to love me, Sybil; I heard her tell that fellow, Audley, so; and he--ah! he is the heir of Lord Lamorna!" "Denzil, dearest Denzil!" then Rose exclaimed, in a low and earnest whisper, putting an arm caressingly round his neck, and her tremulous lips close to his ear, "you are certain to have been promoted by this time, and doubtless the Queen will give you the Order of the Dooranee Empire. I feel sure of it," she added, little knowing that all this had already taken place. But, at the moment she spoke, an access of fever and weakness came over poor Denzil; his bloodshot eyes moved, but he made no response; and a fear began to come over her that he was passing away--slipping from her love and her care--perhaps already far beyond caring now either for promotion or "a ribbon at the breast." How she repented the past pangs her heedlessness had cost this honest heart, we need not say; but as her eyes fell on a verse of "Lalla Rookh," underlined in some old flirtation of Burgoyne's, she applied it to herself; for now "Far other feelings love hath brought; Her soul all flame, her brow all sadness; She now has but the one dear thought, And thinks that o'er almost to madness." On one occasion he became almost insensible; but whether he slept or had swooned, she knew not in her despair of heart; and none of Shireen's household could aid her, by advice or otherwise. At dressing a sabre-cut with myrrh, or stanching a bullet-hole with a bunch of nettle-leaves as a styptic, any of them would have been ready and skilful enough; but with such an ailment as that of Denzil, they were as useless as children, and apt to attribute it to magic, or the spell of some unseen and offended genii; while, as fatalists, they were disposed to commit the event to God alone. So the sorrow and apprehension of the lonely girl grew daily greater.