"Forgive me—oh, forgive me, best beloved! luz de mi alma!"
A sound of approaching footsteps on the marble below startled them, and Inez darted away like a frightened fawn, and flew down the gallery.
"Well, stoical philosopher!" exclaimed Ernest, as his friend emerged from behind the orange-trees; "for so indifferent and frozen a personage, I think you get on pretty fast. Ca ira! I begin to have hopes of you. So you have lost that frozen heart of yours at last, and after such boasting, too! But that is always the way with you braggadocios. I thought it would end so, you were so wondrously valiant."
"But who ever dreamed of seeing any thing so superhumanly beautiful as that young girl? Nothing terrestrial could have conquered me; but my stoicism was defenceless against an angel."
"Bravo! your pride has extricated itself from the dilemma admirably. I must admit that there is some excuse for you; the pearl of Andalusia is undoubtedly ravissante. But your pieces of still life never suit me. I have the bad taste to prefer the laughing black-eyed Juanita de Zayas to all the Oriental languor, drooping lashes, and sentimental monosyllables of your divinity."
"Oh, sacrilege! the very comparison is profanation!" exclaimed Alphonse, raising his hands and eyes to heaven.
"Hold hard, mon cher. I cannot stand that!" responded Ernest energetically.
"Then, in heaven's name, do not put such a noble creature as Doña Inez on a level with a mere little trifling coquette."
"Oh! she is every inch as bad. I watched her narrowly, and would stake my life on it she is only the more dangerous for being the less open. Smooth water, you know——however, you have made a tolerable day's work of it."
"Either the best or the worst of my life, Ernest!" said his friend passionately.