'Listen to him!' she cried again. 'What an exalted standard! But, my young king, let me tell you that you are ungrateful and unjust. If I could only save _you_ by being false to _others_; if every subterfuge, from the beginning, was planned for this--that I might have _you_; that I might hold _your_ life in my hands--what then?' 'Is it so?' he said hoarsely. 'You see!' she cried; 'you were cold because you did not understand!' At this moment, when his will was passing away from him, and his heart was as wax in the midst of his body, there came a strange and sudden disturbance. Subdul Khan had been crouching behind them; his ear was to the ground, and all his senses were on the alert, for he feared treachery. Whether he did actually hear in the distance the rumble of gun-carriages and the sound of armed men on the march, or whether he merely professed to hear them to arouse his master, cannot be certainly known; but the effect was the same. Suddenly, with a cry of, 'The rebels are upon us!' he sprang to his feet. Snow-queen was saddled, and so was the horse of Subdul Khan. They mounted them together, and while Vivien, with a ringing cry, to which none of the besotted men about her paid any heed, ran frantically through the camp, Snow-queen and her master, going like the wind, disappeared in the distance. CHAPTER XXV AN AWFUL RIDE AND A RESCUE Hurry on, brave men! let the wind be your messenger; stop neither to eat nor drink; through the long sultry day and at nightfall, when the awful eye of day is closed and the stars come out pale and languid overhead, even until morning dawns and the terrible round of sweltering heat and blinding dust begins again--hurry on! By narrow and unfrequented ways, through villages whose favour has been bought, under the shade of trees, and across tracts of jungle, where you are obliged to go at a foot-pace, giving breathing time to the gallant beasts that have carried you so bravely--on and ever on, for two dreadful days and nights, that to one of you seem ever afterwards like an awful dream. And yet, you are too late. And well it may be for yourselves that you did not arrive earlier. For the storm has broken. In fire, and blood, and fever it is spreading from city to city, and Jhansi, the home and citadel of a woman scorned, has caught the dread contagion.