est himself in the various initials and symbols deeply carved in
bark, now swollen and half obliterated. As he turned back to the
summer-house, he for the first time noticed that the ground rose behind
it into a long undulation, on the crest of which the same singular
profusion of rose-leaves were scattered. It struck him as being
strangely like a gigantic grave, and that the same idea had occurred to
the fantastic dispenser of the withered flowers. He was still looking
at it, when a rustle in the undergrowth made his heart beat
expectantly. A slinking gray shadow crossed the undulation and
disappeared in the thicket. It was a coyote. At any other time the
extraordinary appearance of this vivid impersonation of the wilderness,
so near a centre of human civilization and habitation, would have
filled him with wonder. But he had room for only a single thought now.
Would SHE come?

Five minutes passed. He no longer waited in the summer-house, but
paced impatiently before the entrance to the labyrinth. Another five
minutes. He was deceived, undoubtedly. She and her sisters were
probably waiting for him and laughing at him on the lawn. He ground
his heel into the clover, and threw his switch into the thicket. Yet
he would give her one--only one moment more.

"Captain Carroll!"

The voice had been and was to HIM the sweetest in the world; but even a
stranger could not have resisted the spell of its musical inflection.
He turned quickly. She was advancing towards him from the summer-house.

"Did you think I was coming that way--where everybody could follow me?"
she laughed, softly. "No; I came through the thicket over there,"
indicating the direction with her flexible shoulder, "and nearly lost
my slipper and my eyes--look!" She threw back the inseparable lace
shawl from her blond head, and showed a spray of myrtle clinging like a
broken wreath to her forehead. The young officer remained gazing at
her silently.

"I like to hear you speak my name," he said, with a slight hesitation
in his breath. "Say it again."

"Car-roll, Car-roll, Car-roll," she murmured gently to herself two or
three times, as if enjoying her own native trilling of the r's. "It's a
pretty name. It sounds like a song. Don Carroll, eh! El Capitan Don
Carroll."

"But my first name is Henry," he said, faintly.

"'Enry--that's not so good. Don Enrico will do. But El Capitan
Carroll is best of all. I must have it always: El Capitan