I was about to speak, when she continued:
“It was her room—we have not touched anything.”
“And where is your cousin now?”
“We know not.”
“There is a mystery,” thought I. I pressed the subject no farther. It was nothing to me now. My heart was happy.
“Let us walk farther, Lupita.”
She turned her eyes upon me with an expression of wonder. The change in my manner—so sudden—how was she to account for it? I could have knelt before her and explained all. Reserve disappeared, and the confidence of the preceding night was fully restored.
We wandered along under the guardarayas, amidst sounds and scenes suggestive of love and tenderness. Love! We heard it in the songs of the birds—in the humming of the bees—in the voices of all nature around us. We felt it in our own hearts. The late cloud had passed, making the sky still brighter than before; the reaction had heightened our mutual passion to the intensity of non-resistance; and we walked on, her hand clasped in mine. We had eyes only for each other.
We reached a clump of cocoa-trees; one of them had fallen, and its smooth trunk offered a seat, protected from the sun by the shadowy leaves of its fellows. On this we sat down. There was no resistance—no reasoning process—no calculation of advantages and chances, such as is too often mingled with the noble passion of love. We felt nothing of this—nothing but that undefinable impulse which had entered our hearts, and to whose mystical power neither of us dreamed of offering opposition. Delay and duty were alike forgotten.
“I shall ask the question now—I shall know my fate at once,” were my thoughts.