r? Did
you meet here by appoint?"

"Don Felipe," cried Donna Mercedes, who had kept silent at first hardly
comprehending and then holding her breath at the denouement. "Hear me.
Captain Alvarado's manner to me has been coldness itself. Nay, he
scarcely manifested the emotion of a friend."

She spoke with a bitterness and resentment painfully apparent to
Alvarado, but which in his bewilderment Don Felipe did not discover.

"I swear to you, senor," she went on cunningly, "until this hour I never
heard him say those words, 'I love you.' But this scene is too much for
me, I can not bear it. Help me hence. Nay, neither of you gentlemen.
With Senora Agapida's aid I can manage. Farewell. When you wish to claim
me, Don Felipe, the betrothal shall be carried out and I shall be yours.
Good-night."

De Tobar sprang after her and caught her hand, raising it respectfully
to his lips.

"Now, senor," he cried turning back, "we can discuss this question
unhindered by the presence of the lady. You said you loved her. How dare
you, a man of no birth, whose very name is an assumption, lift your
eyes so high?"

"This from you, my friend," cried Alvarado, turning whiter than ever at
this insult.

"Sir," interposed the voice of the Viceroy, "restrain yourself. 'Tis
true we know not the birth or name of this young man whom I have honored
with my confidence, upon whom you have bestowed your friendship.
Perchance it may be nobler than thine, or mine, perchance not so, but he
hath ever shown himself--and I have watched him from his youth--a
gentleman, a Spanish gentleman whom all might emulate. You wrong him
deeply----"

"But he loved her."

"What of that?" answered the Viceroy.

"Ay," cried Alvarado. "I do love her, and that I make no secret of it
from you proves the sincerity of my soul. Who could help loving her, and
much less a man in my position, for, in so far as was proper in a
maiden, she has been kind to me since I was a boy. I cherish no hopes,
no dreams, no ambitions. I locked my passion within my breast and
determined to keep it there though it killed me. To-night, with her
helpless at my feet, thrown on my pity, it was wrung from me; but I
swear to you by my knightly honor, by that friendship that hath
subsisted between us of old, that from this hour those words shall
never pass my lips again; that from this hour I shall be as silent as
before. Oh, trust me! I am sadly torn. Thou hast all, I nothing! If thou
canst not