ve.

"You will not say it? Adieu, then," cried he, "I am no longer your
guest," and saying this, he leaped over the broken wall, before the
young girl could offer any opposition to his departure.

Stupefied by this unexpected movement, she mounted upon the fragments
that lay at the bottom of the wall, and stretching her arms toward the
forest, she cried out--

"Tiburcio! Tiburcio! do not leave us so; do you wish to bring upon our
house the malediction of heaven?"

But her voice was either lost to his ears, or he disdained to reply.

She listened a moment, she could hear the sound of his footsteps fast
dying in the distance--until they could be heard no more.

"Oh! my God," cried she, falling upon her knees in an attitude of
prayer, "protect this young man from the dangers that threaten him. Oh
God! watch over him, for alas! he carries with him my heart."

Then forgetting in her grief her projects of ambition, the will of her
father, all that deceptive confidence, which had kept silent the voice
of a love, of the existence of which she was hitherto almost ignorant--
the young girl rose hastily from her knees, once more mounted upon the
wall, and in a heart-rending voice called out, "_Come back! Tiburcio;
come back! I love only you_!"

But no answer was returned, and wrapping her face in her reboso, she sat
down and wept.

Before returning to her chamber she cast one more look in the direction
of the forest, but the woods were still enveloped in the obscurity of
night; all was sombre and silent, though in the distance the feeble
light was still glimmering over the tree tops. All at once it appeared
for an instant to flash more brightly, as if offering a welcome to him
who had no longer a home!

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.

AN ABRUPT DEPARTURE.

Don Estevan and Cuchillo, on leaving the ground of the combat, returned
to the alley of granadines; but for some time not a word passed between
them. Don Estevan was buried in a profound meditation. More skilled
than his coarse companion in the mysteries of the female heart, he had
divined, before the end of the dialogue between Rosarita and Tiburcio,
that the young girl felt for the latter a tender sentiment. It was true
it was just germinating in her soul; but the accents of her voice, her
gestures, and other signs, discovered to the experienced intelligence of
Don Estevan that she really loved Tiburcio, though herself not yet aware
of the extent of that love.