“And I kept my promise,” said the young man, still with a smile. “I said I would release your hand, and I did so; but as for yourself, that is a different matter. You see, señorita, to speak plainly, you are a spy. I have caught you almost within our lines, counting our boats, and, perhaps, our men. There is war between our countries, and I arrest you as a spy.”
“A brave country, yours,” she cried, “to war upon women!”
“Well,” said the young man, with a laugh, “what are we to do? The men won’t stay and fight us.”
She gave him a dark, indignant glance at this, which but heightened her swarthy beauty.
“And what are you,” she said, “but a spy?”
“Not yet,” he replied. “If you had found me peering at the fort, then, perhaps, I should be compelled to plead guilty. But as it is, you are the only spy here at present, señorita. Do you know what the fate of a spy is?”
The girl stood there for a few moments, her face downcast, the living gyves still encircling her wrists. When she looked up it was with a smile so radiant that the young man gasped for breath, and his heart beat faster than ever it had done in warfare.
“But you will not give me up?” she murmured, softly.
“Then would I be in truth a faithless minion,” cried the young man, fervently; “not, indeed, to my country, but to your fascinating sex, which I never adored so much as now.”
“You mean that you would be faithless to your country, but not to me?”