[CHAPTER X.]
LOVE.
Doña Luz and Loyal Heart were placed with regard to each other, in a singular position.
Both young, both handsome, they loved without daring to confess it to themselves, almost without suspecting it.
Both, although their lives had been spent in conditions diametrically opposite, possessed equal freshness of feeling, equal ingenuousness of heart.
The childhood of the maiden had passed away, pale and colourless, amidst the extravagant religious practices of a country where the religion of Christ is rather a paganism than the pure, noble, and simple faith of Europe.
She had never felt a beating of the heart. She was as ignorant of love as she was of sorrow.
She lived thus like the birds of heaven, forgetting the days gone by, careless of the morrow.
The journey she had undertaken had completely changed the colour of her existence.