“For the present, then, I must bid you good-day, sir,” said the soldier, turning from the apartment, and seeking the governor’s palace.

When he had left, Isabella’s father summoned her to his own room, and telling her at once the conversation he had just passed with General Bezan, reiterated to her that nothing would move him from the resolve, and she must learn to forget the young soldier, and place her affections upon some wealthy planter of the island, who coupled with good looks and a pleasing address, the accompaniments of a full purse and broad estates.  Isabella made no reply to her father; she was confounded at the cupidity of his spirit; he had never spoken thus to her before.  She loved him dearly, and grieved that he was susceptible of being influenced by such a grovelling consideration, and with a new cloud hovering over her brow, and its shadow shutting out the gleam of hope that had so lately been radiating it, she left him.

The reader may well imagine the state of mind in which Lorenzo Bezan sought the privacy of his own apartment in the palace.  To fall again from such high hopes was almost more than he could bear, and he walked his room with hurried and anxious steps.  Once he sat down to address a letter to Isabella, for he had not seen her since he left Don Gonzales, and he did not know whether her father would inform her of their conversation or not.  But after one or two ineffectual efforts, he cast the paper from him, in despair, and rising, walked his room again.  To an orderly who entered on business relating to his regular duty, he spoke so brief and abruptly as to startle the man, who understood him only in his better and calmer moods.  Again was his cup of bliss, dashed to the earth!

“I had some undefined fear of it,” he said to himself.  “I almost felt there would be some fearful gulf intervene between Isabella and myself, when I had again left her side.  O, prophetic soul, though our eyes cannot fathom the future, there is an instinctive power in thee that foretells evil.  My life is but a sickly existence.  I am the jest and jeer of fortune, who seems delighted to thwart me, by permitting the nearest approach to the goal of happiness, and yet stepping in just in time to prevent the consummation of my long cherished hopes.”

As he spoke thus, he sat down by the side of his table, and casting his eyes vacantly thereon, suddenly started at seeing the address of his own name, and in the hand of the Countess Moranza.  It was the package she had handed to him at her dying moment.  In the excitement of the scene, and the circumstances that followed, he had not opened it, and there it had since laid forgotten.  He broke the seal, and reading several directions of letters, notes, and small parcels, among the rest one addressed to the queen, he came to one endorsed as important, and bearing his own name, Lorenzo Bezan.

He broke the seal and read, “The enclosed paper is my last will and testament, whereby I do give and bequeath to my friend, General Lorenzo Bezan, my entire estates in the Moranza district of Seville, as his sole property, to have and to hold, and for his heirs after him, forever.  This gift is a memento of our friendship, and a keepsake from one who cherished him for his true nobility of soul!”