The Firebrand

by S. R. Crockett

Rollo judged aright. It was indeed no time for love-making, and, to do the young man justice, he did not connect any idea so concrete with the impulsive kiss he had given to Concha.

She it was who had saved his life at Sarria. She was perilling her own in order to accompany and assist his expedition. She had drawn up the ladder he had foolishly forgotten. Yet, in spite of the fact that he was a young man and by no means averse from love, Rollo was so clean-minded and so little given to think himself desirable in the eyes of women, that it never struck him that the presence of La Giralda and Concha might be interpreted upon other and more personal principles than he had modestly represented to himself.

True, Rollo was vain as a peacock—but not of his love-conquests. Punctilious as any Spaniard upon the smallest point of honour, in a quarrel he was as ready as a Parisian maître d'armes to pull out sword or pistol. Nevertheless when a man boasted in his presence of the favours of a woman, he thought him a fool and a braggart—and was in general nowise backward in telling him so.

Thus it happened that, though Concha had received no honester or better intentioned kiss in her life, the giver of it went about his military duties with a sense of having said his prayers, or generally, having performed some action raising himself in his own estimation.

"God bless her," he said to himself, "I will be a better man for her sweet sake. And, by heavens, if I had had such a sister, I might have been a better fellow long ere this! God bless her, I say!"

But what wonder is it that little Concha, in her passionate Spanish fashion understanding but one way of love, and being little interested in brothers, felt the tears come to her eyes as Rollo's step waxed fainter in the distance, and said over and over to herself with smiling pleasure, "He loves me—he loves me! Oh, if only my mother had lived, I might have been worthier of him. Then I would not have played with men's hearts for amusement to myself, as alas, I have too often done. God forgive me, there was no harm, indeed. But—but—I am not worthy of him—I know I am not!"

So Rollo's hasty kiss on the dark balcony was provocative of a healthy self-reproach on both sides—which at least was so much to the good.

Concha peered out into the darkness towards the south where a few stars were blinking sleepily through the ground-mist. She could dimly discern the outline of the town lying piled beneath her, without a light, without a sound, without a sign of life. From beyond the hills came a weird booming as of a distant cannonade. But Concha, the careless maiden who had grown into a woman in an hour, did not think of these things. For to the Spanish girl, whose heart is touched to the core, there is but one subject worthy of thought. Wars, battles, sieges, the distresses of queens, the danger of royal princesses—all are as nothing, because her lips have been kissed.

"All the same," she muttered to herself, "he ought not have done it—and when I have a little recovered I will tell him so!"

But at that moment, poised upon the topmost spike of the great gate in front of her, she saw the silhouette of a man. He was climbing upwards, with his hand on the cross-bar of the railing, and cautiously insinuating a leg over the barrier, feeling meanwhile gingerly for a foothold on the palace side.