art bounced about in my breast like a shot
adrift in the cook's biggest copper. I approached the lady softly,
and, grown wiser by experience, knelt before I took her hand. She
started, screamed faintly, and endeavored to escape.

"'Stay, stay, dearest Clara!' cried I, detaining her, 'I should not
dare to again address you after the repulse of last night, had I not
just now been an inadvertent, but delighted listener to your own sweet
confession that you loved me. Let me say in return that I love you as
wildly, tenderly, passionately, as if I, like you, had been born under
a southern sun; that I cannot be happy without you. Forgive me for
last night. It was not that my heart was cold, but I was fearful that
unless I constrained myself I should be wild and extravagant. Dearest
Clara, will you say to me that which you just now told Pedro?'

"Her head sunk upon my shoulder. 'Senor,' she murmured, 'I do love
you, and with my whole heart.'

"'And will be my wife?' I asked.

"'Whenever you please.'"

Here the mate paused, and gave several very energetic puffs, and
lighted a new cigar.

"I clasped the dear girl to my heart," he resumed, "and kissed her
cheeks, her lips and eyes, a thousand times, and was just beginning on
the eleventh hundred, when, lo, there stood mine host in the doorway,
evidently very much amused, and, considering that it was his sister
with whom these liberties had been taken, extremely satisfied.

"I came immediately to the conclusion, in my own mind, to defer any
farther labial demonstrations, and felt rather foolish; but Clara
arranged her dress and looked defiance.

"'I beg ten thousand pardons,' said Don Pedro, entering, hat in hand,
and bowing low, 'but really the scene was so exquisitely fine, so much
to my taste, that I could not forbear looking on awhile. Clara, dear,
has Mr. Stewart discovered the way to make love _a la mode_? I
understood you to say he did it oddly and coldly; but, by Venus! I
think he does it in the most natural manner possible, and with some
warmth and vigor, or else I'm no judge of kissing--and I make some
pretensions to being a connoisseur.'

"'And an amateur also,' retorted Clara.

"'I won't deny the soft impeachment--but, my friends, breakfast is
waiting for you, if Mr. Stewart can bring his appetite to relish
coffee after sipping nectar from my sweet sister's lips.'

"We made a very happy trio that morning around the well-spread board
of my friend Pedro. Jus