"Oh! Waller," urged Denzil; "how can you chaff so?"
"Why not; it is a poor heart that never rejoices. You are down in your luck with Rose, but you will laugh at that by-and-by."
Denzil coloured, but made no reply. Oh, had his ears deceived him? Had he heard aright? Had he been bantered by the tongue that spoke so alluringly yesterday, mocked by the lips that had been pressed to his so passionately? Were the clear, bright hazel eyes that but lately looked so earnest, now smiling, as they alone could smile, into those of another?
Might he not have been mistaken? he tormentingly asked himself again and again, and she be true after all—yes, after the sweet impassioned hours of joy by the Lake of Istaliff it must be so! He actually began to flatter himself that this was the case; that all was as he wished it to be; so true it is "that a man freshly in love is more blind than the bats at noonday."
So far as change of scene, of circumstance, of society, and some kinds of experience went, Denzil was beginning to learn the truth of Southey's maxim, "Live as long as you may, the first twenty years are the longest of your life."
CHAPTER XII.
ASSASSINATION.
No special correspondent had ever, or has ever, penetrated beyond the Indus and into the wilds of Kohistan, to saturate the English papers with narratives of the terrible scenes which we are about to describe in some of these pages.
Leaving the cantonments by the centre gate which faced the hills of Siah Sung, Denzil, Waller, and the officers who had joined them, Captains Mackenzie, Lawrence, and Trevor, now rode to where a group of others surrounded one on horseback, who proved to be the Envoy, who had with him a Hindoo syce, or groom, leading a marvellously beautiful Arab horse, which he meant to present in our Queen's name to the Sirdir. With all his avowed confidence in the latter, he had requested that, in case of any unforeseen emergency arising, the 51th Native Infantry, the Shah's 6th regiment and two field pieces should be in readiness for instant service; but so greatly was General Elphinstone debilitated, alike in mind and body, that no order to this effect was issued; so the men remained idle in their bungalows, though it was known that the cowardly Shah Sujah, who had eight hundred ladies, the flower of all his country, shut up with him in the Bala Hissar, was so apprehensive of the result of the meeting, that he coolly sent orders through his Kadun Kahia (or Mother of the Maids) placed in authority over them, that they should, if the rebels under Ackbar got into the city, be each and all prepared to take a deadly poison within an hour.
"Look alive, Denzil—waken up; here is the representative of Her Britannic Majesty in this pleasant part of the world," said Waller to his abstracted friend, while laughing and saluting, he approached Sir William Macnaghten, Baronet, who, for his great political services, had just been appointed Governor of Bombay, and who was in full diplomatic uniform, elaborately laced with silver embroidery, and had several jewelled orders glittering on his breast.