felt that for a single moment she had forgotten herself, and to retrieve the apparent acquiescence that she had seemed to show to the condemned soldier’s words and tale of love, she now appeared to think that she must assume all the hauteur of character that usually governed her in her intercourse with his sex and the world generally.  It was but a simple struggle, and all her self-possession was rallied again to her service and absolute control.

“Captain Bezan,” she said, with assumed dignity, and drawing herself up in all her beauty of to person to its full height, “I came not hither to hear such talk as this from you, nor to submit to such familiarity, and I trust, sir, that you will henceforth remember your station, and respect mine.”

The breast of the prisoner heaved with inward emotion, in the struggle to suppress its outward show, and he bit his lips until the blood nearly flowed.  His face instantly became the picture of despair; for her words had planted that grief and sorrow in his heart which the fear of death could not arouse there.  Even Isabella Gonzales seemed for a moment struck with the effect of her repulse; but her own proud heart would not permit her to recall one word she had uttered.

“I would not leave you, Captain Bezan,” said she, at length, as she gathered the ample folds of the cloak about her, “without once more tendering to you my most earnest thanks for your great services to our family.  You know to what I refer.  I need not tell you,” she continued, with a quivering lip, “that my father has done all in his power to have your sentence remitted, but, alas! to no effect.  Tacon seems to be resolved, and unchangeable.”

As she spoke thus, spite of all her assumed pride and self-control, a tear trembled in her eye, and her respiration came quickly-almost in sobs!

The young soldier looked at her silently for a moment; at first he seemed puzzled; he was weighing in his own mind the meaning of all this as contrasted with the repulse he had just received, and with the estimate he had before formed of her; at last, seeming to read the spirit that had possessed her, he said: 

“Ah, lady, I bless you a thousand times for that tear!”

“Nay, sir, I do not understand you,” she said, quickly.

“Not your own heart either, lady, else you disguise its truth.  Ah! why should all this be so? why should hearts be thus masked?”

“Sir, this is positive impertinence,” said Isabella Gonzales, struggling once more to summon her pride to sustain her.

“Impertinence, lady?” repeated the prisoner, sadly.

“That was my word, sir,” answered the proud girl, with assumed harshness.