"Don Felipe——"
"Is an honorable gentleman, a brave one. He needs no defense at my hands. That much, at least, my father did. There is no objection to my suitor save that I do not love him."
"In time—in time you may," gasped Alvarado.
"Dost thou look within thine own heart and see a fancy so evanescent that thou speakest thus to me?"
"I believe thee, and were a thousand years to roll over my head thine image would still be found here."
She laid her tiny gloved hand upon her breast as she spoke in a low voice, and this time she looked away from him. He would have given heaven and earth to have caught her yielding figure in his arms. She drooped in the saddle beside him in a pose which was a confession of womanly weakness and she swayed toward him as if the heart in her body cried out to that which beat in his own breast.
"Mercedes! Mercedes!" he said, "you torture me beyond endurance! Go back to your duenna, to Señora Agapida, I beg of you! I can stand no more! I did promise and vow in my heart—my honor—my duty——"
"Ay, with men it is different," said the girl, and the sound of a sob in her voice cut him to the heart, "and these things are above love, above everything. I do not—I can not understand. I can not comprehend. You have rejected me—I have offered myself to you a second time—after the refusal of last night. Where is my Spanish pride? Where is my maidenly modesty? That reserve that should be the better part of woman is gone. I know not honor—duty—I only know that though you reject me, I am yours. I, too, am a slave. I love you. Nay, I can not marry Don Felipe de Tobar. 'Twere to make a sacrilege of a sacrament."
