If it be true that "among a crowd of total strangers an acquaintance ranks as a friend," how great must have been the emotions of the volatile Rose, on meeting her avowed lover among those odious and horrible Afghans!
"Rose!"
"Denzil!"
After all they had mutually undergone, the sound of their own names and their own language, had in them so much of home and the past, that both were deeply moved; and heedless of those who were present, forgetting all about them in fact, the impulsive girl flung herself into his arms, and he pressed her to his breast. So, to the undemonstrative Orientals, they formed a very unexpected tableau. She had undergone so much and her agitations were so complicated, that for some time she was quite incapable of speech and could only sob hysterically. She was very pale and worn, but he was so too.
"So you also are a prisoner—do you forgive me now, Denzil?" she asked in a low voice.
"Forgive you—oh Rose, I could die for you!" he responded, passionately.
How often in the visions of the night and in the reveries of the day—those trances of thought to which all at times abandon themselves—had Denzil pictured to himself Rose Trecarrel reclining in his arms, even as on that day by the lake, Rose so bright, so fair and beautiful, and now he held her in reality!
But though she had deceived him once and might do so again, no such fear occurred to him then, and forgotten too were all the bantering remarks of Polwhele and Burgoyne (now, alas, no more) which had excited so much pique, jealousy, and fury in his heart. She was, he knew, so lonely in the world, and she looked so lovely and so helpless. After a time, she said, anxiously,
"There has been great slaughter, I have heard; poor Papa, he has escaped I am sure, and dear Mab and Waller are safe, and all the rest?"
"All cannot have escaped!" was Denzil's vague response; "yet you have done so, and that is enough for me, darling."