"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.
CHAPTER IX.
ADVENTURE IN CABUL.
To his intense mortification, regimental duty detained Denzil in the cantonments all the following day, thus precluding his visiting the General's house at the time he intended; but as a natural sequence to their pleasant little airing by the shores of the Lake of Istaliff, it occurred to him that at their next interview he must beg Rose Trecarrel's acceptance of some suitable love-token; and for this purpose he resolved to visit the great bazaar while it was yet safe for a European to traverse the streets of the Shah's capital, as the dreaded Ackbar Khan was not as yet known to be within its walls at that precise juncture; and evening parade being over, he hastened along the road to the Kohistan gate, and turning to the left after entering it, proceeded at once towards the Char Chouk, the aforesaid great bazaar, with his mind intent on his proposed purchase, and so full of the tender memories of yesterday, that he was quite oblivious of the manner in which the armed Afghans, the red-capped Kussilbashes, and others who were thronging the narrow thoroughfares in unwonted numbers, regarded him; how they scowled ominously, handled their weapons, and muttered curses under their thick flowing mustaches.