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ully dropped at his feet and which had withered over his heart ever since, was to him. The difficulties in the way of the exchange of those sweet nothings that lovers love to dwell upon and the impossibility of any hoped for end to their love making intensified their passion. Little or nothing had been spoken between them, but each knew the other loved. For the first moment the knowledge of that glorious fact had sufficed them--but afterwards they wanted more. Having tasted, they would fain quaff deeply. But they could see no way by which to manage the realization of their dreams. The situation was complicated in every possible way for Alvarado. Had he been a man of family like his friend, de Tobar, he would have gone boldly to the Viceroy and asked for the hand of his daughter, in which case he thought he would have met with no refusal; but, being ignorant of his birth, having not even a legal right to the name he bore, he knew that the proud old Hidalgo would rather see his daughter dead than wedded to him. Of all the ancient splendors of the Spanish people there was left them but one thing of which they could be proud--their ancient name. De Lara, who belonged to one of the noblest and most distinguished families of the Iberian Peninsula, would never consent to degrade his line by allying his only daughter to a nobody, however worthy in other respects the suitor might prove to be. Again, had Mercedes' father been any other than the life-long patron and friend to whom he literally owed everything that he possessed, such was the impetuosity of Alvarado's disposition that, at every hazard, he would have taken the girl by stealth or force from her father's protection, made her his wife, and sought an asylum in England or France, or wherever he could. So desperate was his state of mind, so overwhelming his love that he would have shrunk from nothing to win her. Yet just because the Viceroy had been a father to him, just because he had loved him, had been unexampled in his kindness and consideration to him, just because he reposed such absolutely unlimited confidence in him, the young man felt bound in honor by fetters that he could not break. And there was his friendship for de Tobar. There were many young gallants about the vice-regal court who, jealous of Alvarado's favor and envious of his merits, had not scrupled in the face of his unknown origin to sneer, to mock, or to slight--so far as it was safe to do ei
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