"I venture to hope that you have been good enough to think of what I said
to you a week ago," he went on. "Yes, it was a week ago. It seems to me a
year."

"It seems a long time," stammered Clara. So it did, for the days since had
been crammed with emotions and events, and they gave her young mind an
impression of a long period passed.

"I have been so full of anxiety!" continued Coronado. "Not about our
dangers," he asserted with a little bravado. "Or, rather, not about mine.
For you I have been fearful. The possibility that you might fall into the
hands of the Apaches was a horror to me. But, after all, my chief anxiety
was to know what would be your final answer to me. Yes, my beautiful and
very dear cousin, strange as it may seem under our circumstances, this
thought has always outweighed with me all our dangers."

Coronado, as we have already declared, was really in love with Clara. It
seems incredible, at first glance, that a man who had no conscience could
have a heart. But the assertion is not a fairy story; it is founded in
solid philosophy. It is true that Coronado's moral education had been
neglected or misdirected; that he was either born indifferent to the idea
of duty, or had become indifferent to it; and that he was an egotist of
the first water, bent solely upon favoring and gratifying himself. But
while his nature was somewhat chilled by these things, he had the hottest
of blood in his veins, he possessed a keen perception of the beautiful,
and so he could desire with fury. His love could not be otherwise than
selfish; but it was none the less capable of ruling him tyrannically.

Just at this moment his intensity of feeling made him physically imposing
and almost fascinating. It seemed to remove a veil from his usually filmy
black eyes, and give him power for once to throw out all of truth that
there was in his soul. It communicated to his voice a tremor which made it
eloquent. He exhaled, as it were, an aroma of puissant emotion which was
intoxicating, and which could hardly fail to act upon the sensitive nature
of woman. Clara was so agitated by this influence, that for the moment she
seemed to herself to know no man in the world but Coronado. Even while she
tried to remember Thurstane, he vanished as if expelled by some
enchantment, and left her alone in life with her tempter. Still she could
not or would not answer; though she trembled, she remained speechless.

"I have asked you to be my wif