His full, deep, dark blue eyes had in them an unnatural lustre; his fair, curly hair had the same golden tint as usual, when the falling sunlight touched it; but the Indian brown and the jolly English bloom had left his once-rounded cheeks together, and they were now pale and hollow indeed; and though he was very fair, and his mother had been dark in eye and jetty in tress, something in his face and expression recalled her now to Rose's memory, as she had seen her on that day, when she and Mabel had visited the villa at Porthellick, and, in the vanity of the hour, flattered themselves that they had condescended mightily in so doing. Could they then have foreseen the present time and circumstances?
She gazed at him with great sadness, and great love, too, in her eyes and in her heart; while he, in turn, looked up to her with love and admiration too, and with somewhat of anxiety for her future.
She was attired so prettily and suitably; for the season was summer, and the month was June.
No longer hanging dishevelled in the Afghan fashion, the splendid ripples of her bright auburn hair were coiled up by her own clever fingers in the European mode, and smoothly braided, as she was wont to have them in happier times, showing all the contour of her fine head, her slender neck, and delicate ears. She wore a simple loose dress of white muslin, spotted with the tiniest of red rose-buds; and through the delicate texture of this fabric the curved outline of her shoulders and her tapered arms could be traced, whiter than the gauzy muslin itself—a piquant species of costume, which made old Shireen stroke his beard and mutter, "Barikillah!" (excellent!), as expressive of great satisfaction, not unmixed with more admiration than the Khanum relished.
Rose was destitute of all ornaments, for everything she once possessed of that kind had long since been lost or taken from her. Her feet were cased in tight silk stockings and beautiful little kid boots, laced up in front, and they peeped from amid a wilderness of white-edged petticoats, that lay wreath upon wreath like the leaves of a rose in full bloom; and, altogether, she was such a figure as Denzil had not seen since the jovial days when he and Bob Waller had smoked the calumet of peace together in the old cantonments, and were wont to promenade at the band-stand which stood in the centre thereof; certainly she was quite unlike what one might expect to see in the residence of the Khan of the Kuzzilbashes, where the ideas of the middle ages, and darker epochs still, have not passed away, and things are pretty much as they were in the days of Timour the Tartar.
Rose seemed intuitively to read something of all this in the expression of Denzil's face; for she smiled, and, with one of her old coquettish glances, kissed the tips of her fingers to him.
Circumstanced as they were, Rose, no doubt, in time past had talked a great deal of nonsense, and, seeing how necessary she was to Denzil's happiness, Shireen Khan had relinquished much of her society at chess in his favour; but who ever scrutinises very closely all that a pretty girl talks about, or what male listener, or lover especially, would care to analyse the logic thereof? The parting of charming lips is ever pleasant to look upon, and the music of a sweet English female voice is ever pleasant to hear, and never so sweet or so seductive as when far away from home. And so thought Denzil, as he lay upon his pillow, with heavy eye, with aching temples, and throbbing pulses, listening to the prattle of Rose Trecarrel.
Some books, picked up in the burned cantonments, had also been brought to Rose by the Khan, though he suggested that the Koran, with its hundred and fourteen chapters, ought to suffice for all the literary, legal, and medical necessities of mankind, and womankind too. Among those stray volumes was a copy of "Lalla Rookh," with poor Harry Burgoyne's autograph on the fly-leaf, and with this she had read Denzil asleep, reading steadily on afterwards, and kindly fearing to stop, lest by doing so she might awake him; but now, without her ceasing, he had restlessly stirred and roused himself.
He grudged, even by necessary sleep, to lose by day a moment of her society; for they could converse silently, eye with eye, without speaking; for to lovers there is a dear companionship, an eloquence even, in silence; and now the girl gazed upon her care with her eyes and her heart full of love and tenderness, all the more that he, by perfect isolation, was so completely her own, and that she could minister unto him, as only a woman, a loving and tender one, can tend and minister to the suffering.
It was very strange, all this!