Lights were brought, and then more red tent and macaroon biscuits, for the hour was growing late; still the protracted game went on, and if I regained a dollar I always lost it again; for between the attention I bestowed on the bright smiles and jewelled fingers of Prudentia, and my own intense desire to please, I was a very bad pupil and worse gambler. The moments glided away, and so did my dollars. At last Prudentia clapped her hands, and laughed loudly as she threw down all her cards. She had made me bankrupt!
"Oh foolish señor! O bravo! Que fortuna!" she exclaimed; "how ill you have played! You must beware of sharpers and knights of the post. Ay de mi! You are much too guileless for this bad world. Ah! if I had the making of it, how much better it should have done."
"Better?" said I, thinking of my dollars and doubloons.
"Yes, señor, for I would have left all the evil out of it."
"How innocent this creature is!" thought I; "and how sad it is, that she is committed to a career of such perils as the stage!"
"Now, to punish you," said she, sweeping all my cash into the pocket of her Spanish guardain fante, "I shall keep your purse till to-morrow, for really I do not think you know how to take care of your money."
"While playing, in my desire to please I did but confuse myself; yet I am sure Prudentia will pardon me—a first love will make the boldest heart timid."
"This is all very pretty," she replied, smoothing back her jetty hair, and displaying the exquisite contour of her white arms; "but lovers are so faithless!——"
"A real passion has no end but death. While one is a lover one will be true, for love retires where falsehood enters." Her free manner had infected me.
"Really," replied Prudentia, with one of her droll expressions of eye, "for a young student and soldier, you are wonderful. I begin to be quite charmed with you."