"Ah, lady, I bless you a thousand times for that tear!"
"Nay, sir, I do not understand you," she said, quickly.
"Not your own heart either, lady, else you disguise its truth. Ah! why should all this be so? why should hearts be thus masked?"
"Sir, this is positive impertinence," said Isabella Gonzales, struggling once more to summon her pride to sustain her.
"Impertinence, lady?" repeated the prisoner, sadly.
"That was my word, sir," answered the proud girl, with assumed harshness.
"No, it would be impossible for me, on the very brink of the grave, to say aught but the truth; and I love you too deeply, too fervently, to be impertinent. You do not know me, lady. In my heart I have reared an altar to worship at, and that shrine for three years has been thy dearly loved form. How dearly and passionately I have loved-what a chastening influence it has produced upon my life, my comrades, who know not yet the cause, could tell you. To-morrow I must die. While I hoped one day to win your love, life was most dear to me, and I was happy. I could then have clung to life with as much tenacity as any one. But, lady, I find that I have been mistaken; my whole dream of fancy, of love, is gone, and life is no better to me than a burden. I speak not in haste, nor in passion. You must bear me witness that I am calm and collected; and I assure you that the bullets which end my existence will be but swift-winged messengers of peace to my already broken heart!"
"Captain Bezan," said Isabella, hesitating, and hardly speaking distinctly.
"Well, lady?"
"How could you have so deceived yourself? How could you possibly suppose that one in your sphere of life could hope to be united to one in mine?" asked Isabella Gonzales, with a half averted face and a trembling voice, as she spoke. "It was foolhardy, sir; it was more than that; it was preposterous!"