Isabella Gonzales became thoughtful and melancholy without exactly knowing why.  She avoided company, and often incurred her father’s decided displeasure by absenting herself from the drawing-room when there were visitors of importance.  She seemed to be constantly in a dreamy and moody state, and avoided all her former haunts and companions.  A skilful observer might have told her the cause of all this, and yet, strange to say, so blind did her pride render her, that she could not see, or at least never acknowledged even to herself, that the absent soldier had aught to do with it.

Had not Isabella Gonzales treated Lorenzo Bezan as she did at their last meeting, he would never have accepted the governor-general’s pardon on the terms offered, nor life itself, if it separated him from her he loved.  But as it was, he seemed to feel that life had lost its charm, ambition its incentive for him, and he cast himself forth upon the troubled waters without compass or rudder.  And it was precisely in this spirit that he found himself upon the deck of the vessel, whose white wings were wafting him now across the ocean.

He, too, was misanthropic and unhappy; he tried to reason with himself that Isabella Gonzales was not worthy to render him thus miserable; that she was a coquette-an unfeeling, though beautiful girl; that even had he succeeded, and fortune favored him in his love, she would not have loved him its his heart craved to be loved.  But all this sophistry was overthrown in a moment by the memory of one dear glance, when Isabella, off her guard, and her usual hauteur of manner for the instant, had looked through her eyes the whole truthfulness of her soul; in short, when her heart, not her head, had spoken!

Alas! how few of us feel as we do; how few do as we feel!

Perhaps there is no better spot than on shipboard for a dreamer to be; he has then plenty of time, plenty of space, plenty of theme, and every surrounding, to turn his thoughts inward upon himself.  Lorenzo Bezan found this so.  At times he looked down into the still depths of the blue water, and longed for the repose that seemed to look up to him from below the waves.  He had thought, perhaps, too long upon this subject one soft, calm evening, and had indeed forgotten himself, as it were, and another moment would have seen the working of what seemed a sort of irresistible charm to him, and he would have cast himself into that deep, inviting oblivion!

Then a voice seemed to whisper Isabella’s name in his ear!  He started, looked about him, and awoke from the fearful charm that held him.  It was his good angel that breathed that name to him then, and saved him from the curse of the suicide!