"You will consult your daughter's heart, sir, I trust," he murmured hesitatingly, "even before the claims of wealth?"
The old Spaniard's brow darkened, and his sombre black eyes fixed themselves upon Paul's face with a sinister and penetrating gaze that boded little good to the young man. No more was said upon the subject between the two men. Paul did not relax his industry by one iota after this conversation. The enervating pleasures of the rich could not win him from the stern routine of toil and study.
Perhaps the reader has already guessed the fatal truth.
Paul Lisimon, the unknown dependent upon a rich man's bounty, the penniless lad who knew not even the names of his parents, or of the country which had given him birth—Paul loved the peerless daughter of the wealthy Don Juan Moraquitos; and was it to be wondered that he loved her?
From her childhood he had seen her daily, and had seen her every day more beautiful—more accomplished.
She possessed, it is true, much of the pride of her father's haughty race; but that pride was tempered by the sweetness of Olympia Crivelli; and it was a high and generous sentiment that led the young girl to hate a meanness or falsehood with even a deeper loathing than she would have felt for a crime.
But to Paul Lisimon, Camillia was never proud. To him she was all gentleness; all confiding affection. The very knowledge of his dependence, which, had been dinned into her ears by Don Juan, rendered her only the more anxious to evince a sister-like devotion which should take the sting from his position.
Instinctively she knew, that spite of all outward seeming that position was galling to the proud boy. Instinctively she felt that nature in creating Paul Lisimon had never intended him to fill a subordinate position. He was one of those who are born for greatness, and who, constrained by the cruel trammels of circumstances, and unable to attain their proper level, perish in the flower of youth, withered by the blighting hand of despair.
So died the poet Chatterton, a victim to the suicide's rash madness. So dies many a neglected genius, whose name is never heard by posterity.
Paul loved the heiress; loved her from the first hour in which she had soothed his boyish anguish at the loss of his patron Don Tomaso; loved her in the tranquil years of their youthful studies; loved her with the deep devotion of manhood, when his matured passion burst forth in its full force, and the flickering light became an unquenchable and steady flame.