"You have a cold journey before you," said he.
"And you a most toilsome march afoot. Heaven tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, we are told; I wish it would temper the wind to me," said Rose, with her teeth, short, beautiful and white, chattering as she spoke.
"What have you been doing for all these days past? In what part of the Cantonments have you hidden yourself?" she asked in a low and soft voice.
"Oh—you speak to me kindly—almost tenderly, do you?" said Denzil, with bitterness in his tone; "have you obtained leave from your friend on the Staff to address me!"
He looked at her with eyes in whose expression anger and sorrow mingled, while she looked at him smiling and deprecatory, more than half flattered by his jealous outburst amid the terrors that menaced them all.
"You are surely in a frightful humour this morning," said she; "I shall certainly pity the Afghans if you fall foul of any of them."
"Cold-hearted Rose," replied Denzil, who was in no humour for jesting; "I would not have your ungenerous nature, to hold that title of which, as yet, fate deprives me, though that might make you love me again—even if you ever loved me at all."
"Is this a comedy, Denzil?" said she, smiling more than ever.
"I would to God we had never met," said Denzil in a low voice, while his lip quivered, for he conceived that the secret story of his family had affected her towards him; "you have been but amusing yourself with me; passing the hours that would have been dull here, in playing with my heart—my feelings."
"Why, Denzil Devereaux—you talk like a girl; who ever heard of a man's heart or feelings being trifled with?" said she, with a little silvery laugh as she moved her horse, to speak with some one else.