CHAPTER XXIV.

THE LAMP OF LOVE.

And this fellow of the Irregular Horse--this fellow who was so insufferably good-looking, and seemed to know it too--this interloper, for so Audley Trevelyan chose to consider him--what manner of advances had he already made, and how had she received them, on that overland route, so perilous from the propinquity and the hourly chances it affords of acquaintance ripening into friendship, and of friendship into love?

Was he only to meet her unexpectedly, and, by that strange influence of coincidence already referred to, to find himself supplemented, it might be, and on the verge of losing, if he had not already--deservedly as he felt--lost her?

Did it never occur to the Honourable Mr. Audley Trevelyan that, separating as they did, there were a thousand chances to one against their ever meeting again in this world, and, more than all, the world of India?

He watched long and anxiously; there was no sign of her seeing or recognising him, and, placed where they were, apart, he had neither excuse nor opportunity for drawing nearer her. The durbar closed at last; a banquet, solemn and magnificent, followed; then, on lumbering elephants and beautiful horses, the various dignitaries withdrew, each followed by his noisy and half-nude _suwarri_. A small but select evening party of Europeans was invited that night to the house of the Viceroy; thither went Audley; and there, as he had quite anticipated, they met, not in the suite of rooms, however, but in the magnificent gardens, where there was a display of those wonderful rockets, stars, wooden shells that burst in mid air, displaying a thousand prismatic hues, and many others of those pyrotechnic efforts, in which the Indians so peculiarly excel.

In a walk of the garden, while actually seeking for her, he met Sybil face to face, but leaning on the arm of the same brilliantly dressed officer; for no uniform is more gorgeous or lavish than that of the Irregular Horse, for fancy, vanity, and the army-tailor "run riot" together. He was carrying his cap under his other arm, and seemed entirely satisfied with himself and his companion, in whose pretty ear he was whispering, while smiling, with all the provoking air of a privileged man.

"Ah, Miss Devereaux--you surely remember me?" said Audley, bowing low, with a flush on his brow, and, despite all his efforts, an unmistakable sickly smile in his face.

Sybil grew a trifle paler, as she presented her hand, with a far from startled expression; for she had been quite aware that he was somewhere about the Viceregal Court, and therefore, to her, the meeting was not quite so unexpected.

"You do not seem surprised?" said he.

"Why should I, Mr. Trevelyan, when I knew that you were here?" she replied with perfect candour; "but I am so--so delighted--indeed I am, Audley;" then perceiving that there was an undoubted awkwardness in all this, she coloured, while her eyes sparkled with vexation, and she introduced the two gentlemen rather nervously by name, and then added, in an explanatory tone, to the cavalry officer, "He is quite an old friend, believe me--the same who saved my life. Surely I told you?"

"I am not aware--oh yes--perhaps," drawled the other: "at Cairo, was it not?"

"No, no--in Cornwall."

"But it was in Cairo you told me, when we visited the citadel by moonlight----"

"And we are, as I said, such old friends," she added hastily.

"That, doubtless, you will have much to say to each other. Permit me; for I am perhaps _de trop_," interrupted the other, twirling a moustache, and looking somewhat cloudy; "but I shall hope to see you ere the trumpets announce supper;" and with a smiling bow he resigned Sybil to Audley's proffered arm, and retired with a good grace to join another group.

"Sybil," said Audley, after a half-minute's pause, during which he had been surveying her with fond and loving eyes, "by what singular incidence of the stars are we blessed by meeting thus!"

"You may well ask, if such you feel it to be," she replied calmly, and her voice made his heart vibrate as she spoke; "yet it is simple and prosaic enough. I am here solely by the influence of misfortune."

"Misfortune?"

"Yes."

"Oh, explain."

"When poor mamma died, what was left for me but to eat the bread of dependence?--and I am a dependent now."

"Sybil!"

"I came to India as that which you find me."

"And that is----"

"The humble friend--the companion, for it is nothing more in plain English--of the Governor-General's lady. Mamma gone--Denzil, too, in Afghanistan--was I not fortunate in finding such a home?"

"My poor Sybil," exclaimed Audley, gnawing his moustache and pressing her soft hand and arm against his side. Then he became silent, as the past and present, for a little, held his soul in thrall; and far from the brilliant fête of the Anglo-Indian Court his mind flashed back to other days, and he saw again only Sybil Devereaux and the purple moorland, the solemn rock-pillar, the lonely tarn, with its osier isles, the long-legged heron and the blue kingfisher amid its green reedy sedges, and in the soft sunlight the grey granite earns cast their shadows on the lee, as when he had seen her on that day when first they met; and much of shame for himself and for his father mingled with the memory and his emotion.

But there was a change here!

The poor, pale girl, who had so anxiously and wearily sought to sell her pencilled sketches and water-coloured drawings in the shops of the little market town, who so often with an aching heart took them back, through the mist and the rain and the wind, to the humble cottage where her mother lay dying, was now in a very different sphere, richly though modestly dressed, easy in air and bearing, perfectly self-possessed, surrounded by wealth and rank, yet with all the secret pride of her little heart, nieek, gentle, and happy in aspect.

She, too, was silent for a time, during which she glanced at him covertly and timidly.

"Here again was Audley," was the thought of her heart; "did he love her still? Had he truly loved her, even _then_?" was the next thought, and her heart half answered, "Yes--he had loved her, but only as the worldly love;" and this fear, this half-conviction, dashed her present joy. Yet no woman wishes to believe, or cares to admit even to herself, that the power she once exerted over a man's heart can, under any circumstances, pass altogether away.

"Sybil," said he, "you, any more than I, cannot have forgotten all our past, and the scenes where we met--the wild shore, the precipices, the grey granite rocks of our own Cornwall; and that awful hour in the Pixies' Cave, too--can you have forgotten that?"

"Far from it, Audley,--I have forgotten nothing; and now I must remember the difference of rank that places us so far--so very far apart," she added with a strange flash in her eye and a quiver in her short upper lip.

"Come this way, dear Sybil. I have much to say--to talk with you about--but we must be alone;" and he led her down a less frequented walk, apart from the company, the strains of the military music, the coloured lights and lanterns that hung in garlands and festoons from tree to tree, and the soaring fireworks that ever and anon filled the soft dewy air with the splendour of many-lined brilliance.

"Will this not seem marked?" asked Sybil nervously and almost haughtily.

"How?"

"I must beware of attracting notice now--here especially; and you are no longer the mere Audley Trevelyan of other times."

"Then, dearest, who the deuce am I?" asked he, laughing.

Sybil had seen the Hindoo maidens--slender, graceful, and dark-eyed girls--launching their love-lamps from the ghauts upon the sacred waters of the Ganges--watching them with thrills of alternate joy and fear, as they floated away under the glorious silver radiance of the Indian moon. She had heard their wails of sorrow if the flame flickered out and died; or their merry shouts and songs of glee if they floated steadily and burned truly and bravely. Audley's affection had been to her as a light in her path that had vanished; but now her love-lamp seemed to be lit again; for Audley, with admirable tact, conversed with her as if on their old and former footing, expressing only what he felt--the purest and deepest joy at thus suddenly meeting her again, and he had too much good taste to make the slightest reference to the gossip of his friend Stapylton, the ex-Hussar, though certainly he had neither forgotten it, nor the unpleasantly offhand mode in which it had been communicated to him.

"But how strange--to come to India, my dear girl, of all places in the world! What led you to think of it?" he asked.

"Have I not already told you? I did not think of it: chance threw the offer in my way; and I had two sufficient reasons, at least, for accepting of it."

"And these--bless them, say I!--these were----"

"That my brother, dear Denzil, was here--here then, at least."

"And I--too?"

"I do not say so--least of all must I say so now; and then Lady ----'s offers were most advantageous to a penniless girl like me. You and, more than all, your father, deemed me no suitable match for you, when we were in England--when I was an inmate of my parent's house at Porthellick. You see, I speak quite plainly, Audley, and as one who is quite alone in the world; now, when by death and--and misfortune, I am reduced to eat the bread of dependence, the matter is worse than ever."

"But you love me still, Sybil--do you not!"

She was silent and trembling now.

"Speak," he urged; "you do love me still?"

"Yes, Audley."

"And will marry me, Sybil!"

"No."

"You love another then--another in secret?"

"No--one may not, cannot, love two."

But Audley thought of Stapylton and that devilish Irregular Horseman, and struck the heel of his glazed boot viciously into the gravel of the path.