“Dearest Inez!” I stammered out at length, as I pressed her hands to my lips,—“dearest Inez!”—a faint sob, and a slight pressure of her hand, was the only reply. “I have come to say good-by,” continued I, gaining a little courage as I spoke; “a long good-by, too, in all likelihood. You have heard that we are ordered away,—there, don’t sob, dearest, and, believe me, I had wished ere we parted to have spoken to you calmly and openly; but, alas, I cannot,—I scarcely know what I say.”
“You will not forget me?” said she, in a low voice, that sank into my very heart. “You will not forget me?” As she spoke, her hand dropped heavily upon my shoulder, and her rich luxuriant hair fell upon my cheek. What a devil of a thing is proximity to a downy cheek and a black eyelash, more especially when they belong to one whom you are disposed to believe not indifferent to you! What I did at this precise moment there is no necessity for recording, even had not an adage interdicted such confessions, nor can I now remember what I said; but I can well recollect how, gradually warming with my subject, I entered into a kind of half-declaration of attachment, intended most honestly to be a mere exposé of my own unworthiness to win her favor, and my resolution to leave Lisbon and its neighborhood forever.
Let not any one blame me rashly if he has not experienced the difficulty of my position. The impetus of love-making is like the ardor of a fox-hunt. You care little that the six-bar gate before you is the boundary of another gentleman’s preserves or the fence of his pleasure-ground. You go slap along at a smashing-pace, with your head up, and your hand low, clearing all before you, the opposing difficulties to your progress giving half the zest, because all the danger to your career. So it is with love; the gambling spirit urges one ever onward, and the chance of failure is a reason for pursuit, where no other argument exists.
“And you do love me?” said the senhora, with a soft, low whisper that most unaccountably suggested anything but comfort to me.
“Love you, Inez? By this kiss—I’m in an infernal scrape!” said I, muttering this last half of my sentence to myself.
“And you’ll never be jealous again?”
“Never, by all that’s lovely!—your own sweet lips. That’s the very last thing to reproach me with.”
“And you promise me not to mind that foolish boy? For, after all, you know, it was mere flirtation,—if even that.”
“I’ll never think of him again,” said I, while my brain was burning to make out her meaning. “But, dearest, there goes the trumpet-call—”
“And, as for Pedro Mascarenhas, I never liked him.”