As they proceeded, past groves of drooping willows, past rows of leafy poplars, rice-fields where pools of water glittered in the starlight, and past where clumps of the flowering oleaster filled the air with delicious perfume, Mabel began to recognise the features of the landscape, and knew by the familiar locality that she was once more within a very short distance of Cabul. Again, in the light of the rising moon, as she sailed, white and silvery, above the black jagged crests of the Siah Sung, Mabel Trecarrel could recognise the burned and devastated cantonments, where in flame and ruin the fragile bungalows, the compounds of once-trim hedgerows, and all, had passed away,—the bare boundary walls and angular bastions alone remaining. She saw the site of her father's pretty villa, a place of so many pleasant and happy memories—the daily lounge of all the young officers of the garrison; and there, too, were the remains of the Residency, where Sir William Macnaghten, as the Queen's representative, dispensed hospitality to all. Yonder were the hills and village of Beymaru; and further off a few red lights that twinkled high in air announced the Bala Hissar, the present residence of Ackbar Khan; but to take her in that direction formed then no part of the plans of Zohrab Zubberdust.
He rode straight towards a lonely place which lay between the Beymaru Hills and the Lake of Istaliff; and as the locality grew more and more sequestered he slackened the speed of his horse, now weary and foam-flaked. After a time he drew up, and, requesting her to alight, lifted her to the ground, and politely and gently urged her to rest herself for a little space.
"My sister?" said Mabel, tremulously.
"Is not here," replied he.
"But where, then?"
"Patience yet a while," said he with a smile, which she could not perceive; while he, to be prepared for any emergency, proceeded at once to shift his saddle, rub down his horse with a handful of dry grass, give it a mouthful or two from a certain kind of cake which he carried in his girdle; and then he looked to his bridle, stirrup-leather, and the charges of his pistols. Accustomed to arms and strife of late, Mabel looked quietly on, taking all the preparations for uncertain contingencies as mere matters of course.
Breathless and weary with her strange mode of progression, she had seated herself on a stone close by; and while the careful rider was grooming his steed and making him drink a little of the shining waters of the long narrow lake, she looked anxiously around her, surmising when or in what manner of habitation she should find her sister. Not a house or homestead, not even the black tent of a mountain shepherd, was in sight. On all sides the lonely green and silent hills towered up in the quiet moonlight, and the still, calm lake reflected their undulating outlines downward in its starry depth.
The holly-oak, the wild almond, and the khinjuck tree, which distils myrrh, and in that warlike land of cuts and slashes is in great repute for healing sabre wounds, the homely dog-rose, the sweet-briar, the juniper bush, and the wild geranium, all grew among the clefts of the rocks in luxuriant masses; while sheets of wild tulips waved their gorgeous cups among the green sedges by the lake.
Not far from where she sat was a grove, which she remembered to have been the scene of a once-happy picnic party, of which Bob Waller was one. She recognised the place now. She knew it was a lonely solitude, that in summer was ever full of the perfume of dewy branches, fresh leaves, and opening flowers; but the immediate spot where they had halted had been anciently used as a burying-ground. A portion of an old temple, covered by luxuriant creepers, lay there, and two magnificent cypresses still towered skyward amid the half-flattened mounds and sinking grave-stones of the long-forgotten dead. The remains of a little musjid, or place for prayer, long since ruined by some savage and idolatrous Khonds, who came down from the hills, lay there among the débris, which included a shattered well, built by some pious Moslem of old. The water from it gurgled past her feet towards the lake, and she remembered how Waller had placed the bottles of champagne and red Cabul wine in the runnel to cool them.
And now, as if contrasting the joyous past with the bitter present, a shudder came over Mabel. She held out her pale hand, which looked like ivory in the moonlight, and said to Zohrab, as he approached her—