“Sir, you are impertinent!” said Isabella, shrinking from the ardor of his expression.

“Nay, lady,” said the young officer, profoundly humble, “it is impossible for such love as mine to lead to impertinence to one whom I little less than worship.”

“Leave me, sir!”

“Yes, Isabella Gonzales, if you will repeat those words calmly; if you will deliberately bid me, who have so often prayed for, so hoped for such a moment as this, to go, I will go.”

“But, sir, you will compromise me by this protracted conversation.”

“Heaven forbid.  But for you I would risk all things-life, reputation, all that is valuable to me in life; yet perhaps I am forgetful, perhaps a thoughtless.”

“What strange power and music there is in his voice,” whispered Isabella, to herself.

Completely puzzled by his deep respect, his gallant and noble bearing, the memory of his late noble conduct in saving Ruez’s life, Isabella hardly knew what to say, and she stood thus half confused, trotting her pretty foot upon the path of the Plato with a vexed air.  At last, as if struggling to break the spell that seemed to be hanging over them, she said: 

“How could one like you, sir, ever dare to entertain such feelings towards me? the audaciousness of your language almost strikes me dumb.”

“Lady,” said the young soldier, respectfully, “the sincerity of my passion has been its only self-sustaining power.  I felt that love like mine could not be in vain.  I was sure that such affection was never planted in my breast to bloom and blossom simply for disappointment.  I could not think that this was so.”

“I am out of all patience with his impertinence,” said Isabella Gonzales, to herself, pettishly.  “I don’t know what to say to him.”

“Sir, you must leave this place at once,” she said, at last, after a brief pause.

“I shall do so, lady, at your bidding; but only to pray and hope for the next meeting between us, when you may perhaps better know the poor soldier’s heart.”

“Farewell, sir,” said Isabella.

“Farewell, Isabella Gonzales.”

“Are you going so soon?” asked Ruez, now approaching them from a short distance in the rear, where he had been playing with the hound.

“Yes, Ruez,” said the soldier, kindly.  “You are quite recovered, I trust, from the effects of that cold bath taken off the parapet yonder.”

“O yes, I am quite recovered now.”

“It was a high leap for one of your age.”

“It was indeed,” said the boy, with a shudder at the remembrance.

“And, O, sir, I have not thanked you for that gallant deed,” said Isabella Gonzales, extending her hand incontinently to Captain Bezan, in the enthusiasm of the moment, influenced by the sincerity of her feelings, his noble and manly bearing, and the kind and touching words he had uttered to Ruez.

It would be difficult for us to describe her as she appeared at that moment in the soldier’s eye.  How lovely she seemed to him, when dropping all reserve for the moment, not only her tongue, but her eloquent eyes spoke from the tenderness of her woman’s heart.  A sacred vision would have impressed him no more than did the loveliness of her presence at that moment.