“An Arab cannot take back his word,” he said in a husky voice.  “I am your slave to do with as you will; my life is not mine to destroy.”

The hand on the balcony seemed as though its hold were relaxing.  I placed mine on it as I said: 

“Felipe, my beloved, from this moment I am your wife in thought and will.  Go in the morning to ask my father for my hand.  He wishes to retain my fortune; but if you promise to acknowledge receipt of it in the contract, his consent will no doubt be given.  I am no longer Armande de Chaulieu.  Leave me at once; no breath of scandal must touch Louise de Macumer.”

He listened with blanched face and trembling limbs, then, like a flash, had cleared the ten feet to the ground in safety.  It was a moment of agony, but he waved his hand to me and disappeared.

“I am loved then,” I said to myself, “as never woman was before.”  And I fell asleep in the calm content of a child, my destiny for ever fixed.

About two o’clock next day my father summoned me to his private room, where I found the Duchess and Macumer.  There was an interchange of civilities.  I replied quite simply that if my father and M. Henarez were of one mind, I had no reason to oppose their wishes.  Thereupon my mother invited the Baron to dinner; and after dinner, we all four went for a drive in the Bois de Boulogne, where I had the pleasure of smiling ironically to M. de Marsay as he passed on horseback and caught sight of Macumer sitting opposite to us beside my father.

My bewitching Felipe has had his cards reprinted as follows: 

HENAREZ

(Baron de Macumer, formerly Duc de Soria.)

Every morning he brings me with his own hands a splendid bouquet, hidden in which I never fail to find a letter, containing a Spanish sonnet in my honor, which he has composed during the night.

Not to make this letter inordinately large, I send you as specimens only the first and last of these sonnets, which I have translated for your benefit, word for word, and line for line:—­

FIRST SONNET

  Many a time I’ve stood, clad in thin silken vest,
  Drawn sword in hand, with steady pulse,
  Waiting the charge of a raging bull,
  And the thrust of his horn, sharper-pointed than Phoebe’s crescent.

  I’ve scaled, on my lips the lilt of an Andalusian dance,
  The steep redoubt under a rain of fire;
  I’ve staked my life upon a hazard of the dice
  Careless, as though it were a gold doubloon.

  My hand would seek the ball out of the cannon’s mouth,
  But now meseems I grow more timid than a crouching hair,
  Or a child spying some ghost in the curtain’s folds.

  For when your sweet eye rests on me,
  Any icy sweat covers my brow, my knees give way,
  I tremble, shrink, my courage gone.