The curtains were drawn back, and the red glow of the half-open stove and of the night-light shed a radiance on her surroundings, but whenever her eyes wandered they seemed to see something that was familiar and yet strange to them.
Her mind was every way confused and involved, and poor Jack from time to time licked her hand unnoticed.
There was, however, always the one prominent idea. Leslie Colville, the one love of her heart, her affianced husband, was dead—killed cruelly—horribly, she doubted not, but in what fashion she knew not, and, fortunately perhaps, should never know.
And ever and anon aching memory went back to that sunny noon when she first met him, yet knew him not, as they fished together by the bonnie Birks of Invermay.
CHAPTER V.
IN THE BALA HISSAR.
Our advanced post was in the Kurram Valley—the only part of the Afghan border which had been trodden by the foot of a Briton since the previous Cabul war—a post, the boundary of the so-called 'scientific frontier,' which had been held by a body of our troops, European and native, for some three months during the summer of this eventful year; and all had been suffering more or less from the breathless heat and malaria, dulness, and that growing ennui which a languid game of polo or lawn-tennis (without ladies) utterly failed to ameliorate; and all thought that, as anything exciting was better than nothing, a brush with the Mongols, the Ahmed, or Hassan Keyls would be a relief.
Many officers began to think, even to talk, hopefully of leave of absence to visit India, to look up old chums in Peshawur, Rawul Pindi, or Lahore; or when longer leave for Europe must be given; when news of the attack on the Residency at Cabul, and the massacre of the envoy and his people fell upon them like a clap of thunder!
These terrible tidings were brought by Taimur, a Usbeg Tartar, who served as a trooper in the Guide escort—a man of undoubted daring, bravery, and hardihood—who had achieved his escape from the city of blood by the aid of some of his own race who were among the Cabulee troops that had come in from Herat.
After twelve days' wandering, and enduring great suffering in those savage and stupendous mountain gorges that lie between Cabul and the Kotal of Lundikhani, he reached the advanced post in the Kurram Valley, in rags, famished, and every way in a deplorable state of destitution, to make his report, which was instantly telegraphed by the officer commanding to the Viceroy at Simla.