"How?"
"I must beware of attracting notice now—here especially; and you are no longer the mere Audley Trevelyan of other times."
"Then, dearest, who the deuce am I?" asked he, laughing.
Sybil had seen the Hindoo maidens—slender, graceful, and dark-eyed girls—launching their love-lamps from the ghauts upon the sacred waters of the Ganges—watching them with thrills of alternate joy and fear, as they floated away under the glorious silver radiance of the Indian moon. She had heard their wails of sorrow if the flame flickered out and died; or their merry shouts and songs of glee if they floated steadily and burned truly and bravely. Audley's affection had been to her as a light in her path that had vanished; but now her love-lamp seemed to be lit again; for Audley, with admirable tact, conversed with her as if on their old and former footing, expressing only what he felt—the purest and deepest joy at thus suddenly meeting her again, and he had too much good taste to make the slightest reference to the gossip of his friend Stapylton, the ex-Hussar, though certainly he had neither forgotten it, nor the unpleasantly offhand mode in which it had been communicated to him.
"But how strange—to come to India, my dear girl, of all places in the world! What led you to think of it?" he asked.
"Have I not already told you? I did not think of it: chance threw the offer in my way; and I had two sufficient reasons, at least, for accepting of it."
"And these—bless them, say I!—these were——"
"That my brother, dear Denzil, was here—here then, at least."
"And I—too?"
"I do not say so—least of all must I say so now; and then Lady ——'s offers were most advantageous to a penniless girl like me. You and, more than all, your father, deemed me no suitable match for you, when we were in England—when I was an inmate of my parent's house at Porthellick. You see, I speak quite plainly, Audley, and as one who is quite alone in the world; now, when by death and—and misfortune, I am reduced to eat the bread of dependence, the matter is worse than ever."