"There it is again," she continued, nervously, looking around.
"Down, Carlo, down," said the boy, sharply to the hound, as it sprang at the same time from a crouching posture, and uttered a deep, angry growl, peculiar to its species.
But the animal seemed too much aroused to be so easily pacified with words, and with heavy bounds sprang towards the seaward end of the Plato, over the parapet of which, where it joined a lofty stone wall that made a portion of the stone barracks of the army, a man leaped to the ground. The hound suddenly crouched, the moment it fairly reached the figure of the new coiner, and instead of the hostile attitude, it had so lately he assumed, now placed its fore paws upon the breast of the person, and wagged its tail with evident tokens of pleasure at the meeting.
"That is a very strange way to enter the Plato," said Isabella, to her brother, drawing nearer to his side as she spoke. "I wonder who it can be?"
"Some friend of Carlo's, for he never behaves in that way to strangers," said the boy.
"So it would seem; but here he comes, be he whom he may."
"By our lady!" said the boy, earnestly, with a flash of spirit and color across his usually quiet and pale face. "Sister, it is Captain Bezan!"
"Captain Bezan, I believe," said Isabella, courtesying coolly to his respectful bow.
"The same, lady."
"You have chosen a singular mode of introduction, sir," said the Senorita Isabella Gonzales, somewhat severely, as she drew herself up with an air of cold reserve.