"Stephano!" he cried at last. "Remember Lieutenant Dulaurier!"
"REMEMBER LIEUTENANT DULAURIER!"
"Ah!" groaned Stephano, rudely torn from his ecstasy of happiness; and he fixed his gaze upon his cousin.
The girl had not even heard Don Pedro.
"Rosita," said her lover, "you say you love me, but you have a fiancé!"
"Dulaurier!" cried the startled girl. "Great Heaven! pardon me, I had forgotten."
"If this man," continued Stephano, "came here to claim your promise, you would reply, would you not, that friendship alone, not love, had drawn you towards him, and that your hand, promised when you hardly knew what you did, would now be given without your heart?"
"Yes, that is what I should answer; but he is not likely to come here, Stephano."
"And what if he were here already?" asked an impressive voice.