When I had finished speaking, she turned towards me, but without raising her eyes. Then pronouncing the formal phrase, “Mil gracius señor” she stepped silently towards the entrance of the tent.
Before passing out, she paused a moment to state apologetically the object of her departure—some trifling errand relating to the invalid.
But for this I might have fancied that my flattery had offended, or perhaps the glance of gallantry with which I had regarded her. Even had it been so, I could not then have apologised: for in another instant she was gone.
Story 1, Chapter X.
An Implacable Pursuer.
I was in the midst of circumstances still unexplained. A wounded man found lying upon the field of battle—a mere youth; in no respect, either in costume, accoutrements, or personal appearance, resembling the thing called a “common soldier,” and yet bearing no insignia to show that he was aught else.
Found with an enemy standing over him, not a national foe, but a countryman—and, as it appeared, an old school-fellow, macheté in hand, threatening to accomplish what the foeman had left incomplete—threatening his life, and only hindered from taking it by the merest accidental intervention!
Near at hand, soon after to appear by his side, a woman—not one of those hideous hags sometimes seen on the morrow of a bloody battle, skulking among the slain, and stooping, vulture-like, over the mangled corpse—but a young girl of sweet voice and lovely aspect; so contrasting with the rude objects around her, so apparently out of place amid such scenes, that instead of a human being, a form of flesh and blood, one might have believed her to be an angel of mercy, that had descended from the sky to soothe the sufferings which men in their frantic fury had caused one another!