So, from time to time the pale girl found herself gazing on the paler face of the dead—of him who had so loved her—gazing with that mingled emotion of incredulity, wonder, and terror, awe and sorrow, which passeth all experience or description.
There was no change in the air; there was no change in the light: one was still and calm, and laden with perfume; the other as bright and clear as ever: and the blaze of yellow sunshine poured into the room precisely as it did an hour ago; but now it fell on the face of the dead!
And the clear voice of the pagoda-thrush sang on; but how monotonously now!
Rose was stunned, and sat crouching on the floor, with her face covered by her hands, her head between her knees, and her bright dishevelled hair falling forward in silky volume well nigh to her feet. Ignorant of what to say, or how to soothe grief so passionate, the Khanum, unveiled, hung over her in kindness of heart, but with one prevailing idea—that the death of an idolater must be very terrible; that already the fiends must be contesting for the possession of his soul; that the prescribed portion of the Koran had not been read to him; and even if it had been, what would it avail now, till that day when the solid mountains and the soft white clouds should be rolled away together by the blast of the trumpet of Azrael?
So his last thoughts had been of his dead mother, as Rose remembered, and not of her. Her father was dead; Mabel was gone to Toorkistan, too surely beyond ransom or redemption: oh, why was she left to live?
If the sense of exile is so strong in the heart of the Anglo-Indian, even amid all the luxuries and splendours of Calcutta, the city of palaces—amid the gaieties and frivolities of Chowringhee,—what must that sense have been to the heart of this lonely English girl, far away beyond Peshawur, the gate of Western India, beyond the Indus, fifteen hundred English miles, as the crow flies, "up-country," from the mouth of the Hooghley and the shore of Bengal—where the railway whistle will long be unheard, and where Murray, Cook, and Bradshaw may never yet be known!
Notwithstanding all that Rose had undergone of late, and all that she had schooled herself to anticipate as but too probable, she was still unable fully to realise the actual extent of the misfortunes that threatened her. Much of that deep misery which Sybil had endured elsewhere, when crouching in the damp and mist outside her mother's door, came over Rose's spirit now. Henceforward, she felt that life must be objectless; that safety or pursuit, freedom or captivity, sea or land, must be all alike to her; and for a time her poor brain, so long oppressed by successive sorrows and excitements, became almost unconscious of external impressions, and she sat as one in a dream, hearing only the buzz of the summer flies and the voice of the pagoda-thrush.
Suddenly another sound seemed to mingle with the notes of the birds; it came on the air from a great distance. She started and looked wildly up—her once-clear hazel eyes all bloodshot and tearless now.
What was it? what is it? for the sound was there, and she seemed to hear it still, and the Khanum heard it too!
Nearer it came, and nearer.