CHAPTER VIII.

THE DRIVE.

Mabel was not at the Residency, as the sentinels of the Queen's 44th, at the gate, informed them, she having driven away with the Lady of the Envoy to visit Lady Sale, about half an hour before. Denzil perhaps might have foreseen that the sisters would miss each other, had he known more of the inner nature of Rose Trecarrel, or more of the science of flirtation.

"How excessively provoking!" she exclaimed; "shall we return to the band, or--drive without her? Besides we might perhaps meet or overtake them."

The idea of a solitary drive was somewhat perilous at that juncture of our affairs, as the district was much disturbed, and patrols of the 5th Cavalry and 1st Local Horse of the Shah, were on all the roads leading to Cabul. All the people were in arms, and since the murder of Sir Alexander Burnes, more than one officer had been waylaid and seriously wounded. But the temptation was too great, and Denzil "supposed that they might take a little drive together;" so turning the phaeton from the Residency gate, Rose drove along the Kohistan road, in a direction from Cabul.

A wretched Hindoo Kulassy, or tent-pitcher--just such a creature as one may see shivering in the Strand, singing in a nasal monotone to the beating of his dusky fingers on a tom-tom--cried something in mockery after them--a sign of the times--but they heard him not. The Shah Bagh, amid the luxuriant shrubberies of which the voices of the dove and nightingale were heard at certain seasons; the quaint, old musjeed, where Waller was on guard; the village of Behmaru; a pile of stones marking where an English lady had been thrown out of her palanquin and murdered by some wild Belooches, who fled, leaving her unplundered, as they deem the blood of a woman bodes disaster to those who shed it, were each and all soon left behind, and they drew near the long and narrow lake of Istaliff, which is about four miles in length, and where Sinclair's boat lay now neglected among the weeds and sedges.

The vicinity of this lake, the only one in Afghanistan, was lonely, and the hills of Behmaru bordered it on the east. There the shaggy goat, bearded like his Afghan master, and the graceful little antelope leaped from rock to rock; there the long-haired cat and the jabbering ape sprang from branch to branch of the plane and poplar trees, and the beautiful little bird known as the Greek partridge, the hill-chuckore of the natives, whirred up from among the long grass; but save these, and once when a solitary Afghan shepherd peeped forth from his tent of coarse black camlet, pitched on the green mountain slope, there seemed no living thing on their now sequestered path.

Waller, Burgoyne, and others, were older and more showy officers than Denzil, as yet; but it pleased the caprice of Rose Trecarrel to attach him for a time, if not hopelessly, to the train of her admirers; though there was a double risk in the little expedition of that day--the exciting comment among her friends, and the more perilous and equally probable advent of some plundering natives or armed fanatics; yet, heedless of all, the rash girl drove on, looking laughingly back from time to time, with her bright smiling face and alluring eyes, at the lover who sat behind her, striving to speak on passing objects or common-place events, while his soul was full of her, and her only.

Fortunately, no deadly or perilous adventure marked that day's expedition; yet Denzil was fated never to forget it.

Rose certainly was fond of Denzil; but her love affair had, to her, much of the phase of amusement in it. In him, it was mingled with intense and delicate respect; and every fibre seemed to thrill, when she turned half round and showed her face so beautiful in its animation, while, blown back by the soft breeze and their progress against it, her veil, and sometimes one loose tress of her silky, auburn hair, were swept across his mouth and eyes.

Denzil's hand rested on the back of her seat, and as she reclined against it, he knew that there was little more than a silk dress between it and a neck of snowy whiteness; and as the sunlight fell on her brilliant hair, it shone like floss silk, or satin, rather, while her eyes were ever beaming with pleasure, fun, excitement, and something of fondness, too; for he who sat near her was handsome, winning, dazzled by her, and, as she well knew, loved her dearly.

"Do you believe in animal magnetism?" she asked abruptly.

"I don't know--never thought about it, though I have heard old What's-his-name lecture on it at Sandhurst; but what do you mean?"

"The strange sympathy and attraction that are created between two persons who meet each other for the first time--love at first sight, in fact."

Denzil's heart beat very fast, and he was about to make a suitable response, when Rose resumed.

"I am so glad to have the pleasure of driving you, Mr. Devereaux," said she; "but see how those reins have reddened my poor fingers!" she added, holding up a plump, little white hand, ungloved, most temptingly before him. The ponies were proceeding at a walk now, and for Denzil to resist taking that hand in his, caressingly, was impossible; the next moment he had bent his lips to it, and still retained it, for Rose made no effort to withdraw it; and this seemed rather encouraging.

"And you never were in love till you came to Cabul?" she asked, deliberately.

"Never, till I saw you, Rose--dear, dear Rose--ah, permit me to call you so?" replied Denzil, with his eyes so full of tender emotion that her dark lashes drooped for a moment.

"You must not talk in this way, Mr. Devereaux; but how is one to know true love--for there is only one love, though a hundred imitations of it?" she asked, laughing--she was always laughing.

"Some one says so, or writes so, I think."

"De La Rochefoucauld."

"And De La Rochefoucauld is right," replied Denzil, covering with kisses her velvety and unresisting hand.

"I never thought you cared so much for me, Mr. Devereaux," said she after a pause.

"Cared--Oh, Rose, can you use a phrase so tame as that?"

"Well, I mean--good Heavens, I don't know what I mean! I never thought you loved me. I had some idea that you preferred Mabel--she is so statuesque."

Rose had never thought this; but it suited her to say so, and gain a little time. She half closed her clear brown eyes, and smiling most archly and seductively under their long lashes at him, said in a low voice,--

"And you love me--actually love me?"

"I have dared to say so--Rose."

"But you are so young, Denzil--dare I say Denzil?"

"Only a year perhaps younger than you."

"But then you are only an Ensign--and people would so laugh!"

"Let them do so--he who laughs wins; one day I shall be something more," said he earnestly.

"Sit beside me, please, and not behind; I shall have quite a crick in my poor little neck by the way I have to turn--and I shall give you the reins too."

In a moment Denzil was seated by her side.

"And now," said she, "let us talk of something else than love; we have had quite enough of it for one day, my poor Denzil."

How his heart thrilled again, at the sound of his own name on her lips.

"Of what shall we speak--of what else can one think or speak when with you?"

"Oh, anything; how do you like this dress, for instance--my ayah trimmed it?" and while speaking she opened her soft cashmere shawl and showed her waist and the breast of her dress trimmed with--Denzil knew not what--for to resist putting an arm round that adorable waist (a movement which we dare not quite say Miss Rose Trecarrel perhaps expected) was impossible.

"Denzil--Mr. Devereaux!" she exclaimed--"oh good Heavens! if you--if we are seen by any one."

"Pardon me--but permit me," he sighed.

"Listen for a moment and do be reasonable. I can scarcely admit or realise the idea that you are _the_ one who is to give a tone, a colour, to all my future life. No, Denzil; you have paid me the greatest compliment a man can pay a woman; but it may not be. Let us be friends--oh yes! dear, dear friends, who shall never forget each other; but not lovers" (here she held up her ruddy lips to the bewildered Denzil) "not lovers--oh,no--not lovers!"

Kisses stifled all that might have followed.

What art or madness was this?

Denzil felt as if the landscape swam around him, and he was rather fond and fatuous in his proceedings, we must admit; but his earnestness impressed at last the coquette by his side. She began to think she had gone rather too far, so she became grave, and a sadness almost stole over her face.

She began to consider that this love-making was all very well and pleasant so long as it lasted, but where was it to end? As others have ended, thought Rose. There were moments when she could not help yielding to the calm delight with which the pure passion of Denzil was apt to inspire her, for there was a genuine freshness in it. Many had flattered her; many had pressed and kissed her hands, toyed with her beautiful hair, aye, and not a few had kissed her cheek too; but beyond all those, he seemed so happy, so intensely enchanted with her--seeming to drink in her accents--to live upon her smiles!

In short, he thoroughly _believed_ in her, and she tried for the time to believe in herself; and yet--and yet--with the impassioned kisses of her young lover on her lips, she felt that it was all folly--folly in him, folly in her--a folly that must soon have a painful, perhaps a mortifying end.

Did it never occur to her, that young though he was, those caresses and kisses--those words half sighed, and thoughts half-uttered, might never be forgotten by him; but be recalled in time to come with sadness as "the delight of remembered days."

"Now do let us be rational, dearest Denzil," said she smoothing her hair and quickly adjusting her shawl, collar, and gloves, as a turn of the road brought them in sight of the cantonments and a patrol of the 5th Cavalry under a Duifodar riding slowly along; and on their drawing a little nearer her father's house prudence on Rose's part led her to suggest that Denzil should leave her.

"Good-bye till to-morrow--you will call and see us, of course," said she, as he alighted from the phaeton; "dear Denzil," she added, her eyes beaming with their usual witchery and waggery the while, "have we not enjoyed the band to-day?"

He knew not what he replied as she drove off and once or twice turned to kiss her hand to him, while lingeringly and with his heart swelling with all that had passed, he turned from the Kohistan road towards his somewhat squalid quarters in the old Afghan fort.

The secret understanding between them seemed to be growing deeper! What was to be the sequel, and what would the General say? But, as yet, prudence had suggested neither one idea nor the other to Denzil.

It was well for him, as after mess, he lay on his charpoy, or camp-bed, indulging in a quiet cigar and plunged in happy reverie, dreaming over all the events of that delightful drive by the Lake of Istaliff, that he did not overhear a few words of a conversation regarding him, and taking place at that precise time in a corner of General Trecarrel's drawing-room.

"Take care, Rose," Mabel was saying; "I have heard of your solitary drive to-day from Polwhele, though papa has not--a drive in defiance of the dreadfully disturbed state of the people hereabout--nearly all in insurrection, in fact. Mr. Devereaux is only a very junior subaltern, and the Civil Service are scarce enough up here certainly; but remember that cloudy story about his family which we heard at Porthellick."

"I care not," replied Rose, looking up from a fauteuil on which she was languidly reclining, her whole occupation being the opening and shutting of a beautiful fan given to her by some forgotten sub of Sale's Light Infantry; "the poor fellow loves me----"

"He has told you so?"

"Yes--so I shan't betray his home secret, if there is one."

"Yet you would betray himself?"

"Don't say so, Mab?"

"Why?"

"It sounds so horrid."

"But when Audley Trevelyan--the heir to a peerage comes----"

"Audley seems to find attraction enough in Bombay," said Rose, with an air of pique; "so please attend to Waller and his long fair whiskers, my dear sister, I am quite able to take care of myself. Besides, Mab, this lad Devereaux is only one among many."

"But to him you may be one--_the one_--one only Rose."

"I know it," was the pitiless reply.