"My sweet little love!—my Sybil, so tender and so true!" exclaimed Audley, pressing her with ardour to his breast.
But a short time ago, Sybil had been hoping that she would forget him; hoping, while journeying towards the land where he was—the land of the Sun—she who long since should have been his wife. She had striven for forgetfulness, hopelessly, yet with something of earnestness in the desire; and now that she had heard his voice again, the old spell was upon her—the spell of past hours, of remembered days—the spell of her lover's presence; and to be with him, the girl acknowledged in her heart, was to be in heaven again!
But now, we fear that we have intruded upon them quite long enough.
And so, till the time came when they should be joined by Waller and the Trecarrels (for companionship, it had been arranged that they should all take the journey by dawk and river-steamer, and then the overland route home together), the days passed pleasantly and swiftly at delightful Simla, in rides and drives among its wonderful scenery; where the netted bramble, the great strawberry, and giant fern covered all the rocks; the soft peach, the dark plum, the rosy apple, and the golden pear grew wild; and the dark-green pines, vast in proportion as the stupendous Himalayas, from whence they sprang, cast a solemn shadow over all, making deep and leafy recesses where the monkey swung by his tail, the buffalo browsed at noon, the leopard and the wild hog lurked for their food; by mountain villages that clustered near the fortified dwelling of the chieftain whose tower was built like the cone of an English glass house; by hill and vale, rock and stream, where flocks were grazing, watched by shepherds, quaint and savage-looking as their rural god, the son of Mercury, and by Thibet mastiffs, that reminded Sybil of her lover's four-footed friend, the Rajah of past days; and ever and anon, as they drove, or rode, or rambled, they talked, as lovers will do, of their future home in Cornwall, with all its associations so dear to them, and now so far away, and so they would marvel
"What feet trod paths that now no more
Their feet together tread?
How in the twilight looked the shore?
Was still the sea outspread
Beneath the sky, a silent plain,
Of silver lamps that wax and wane?
What ships went sailing by the strand
Of that fair consecrated land?"
Waller arrived at Simla to find himself gazetted in the Bengal Hurkaru as major, and to get, like Audley, his glittering Order of the Dooranee Empire from the hands of the Viceroy; therefore he hung it round the white neck of Mabel, while Rose fell heiress to that which should, had he survived, have been her father's decoration.
So the schemes, the plotting with the wretched solicitor, Sharkley, and all the avarice of Downie Trevelyan availed him nothing in one sense; for now the daughter of that Constance Devereaux he had so cruelly wronged was coming home to Rhoscadzhel as the bride of his son, and in her own hereditary place as the Lady of Lamorna.
It is but justice to his memory, however, to record, that having some premonition or presentiment that death was near, or might come on him as it came on his older kinsman, something of the spirit of the Christian and the gentleman got the better of the more cold-blooded and sordid training of the lawyer; and Downie wrote out, sealed up, and left a confession concerning the two papers he had obtained and destroyed; and this document was found tied up with his will, in the library of Rhoscadzhel, by Messrs. Gorbelly and Culverhole, his astounded solicitors. Not that any act of roguery surprised them, but only the folly of any man ever committing the admission thereof to ink and paper.
Audley and Sybil were but one couple out of several especially among the rescuers and the rescued, who were seized with matrimonial fancies to make Simla gay, after the retreat from Cabul—the result of propinquity, perhaps, and the system of chances. We may briefly state that they were married by the chaplain of the Governor-General, who gave the bride away; and not long after, Waller gave Mabel's marriage-ring a guard, wherein was set a jewel, the envy of all the ladies there—the sapphire which he had plucked from the steel cap of Amen Oolah Khan at the Battle of Tizeen.
At Simla Rose was thus twice a bridesmaid, and a lovely one she looked.