ustin doubtless only
yielded obedience to the ambitious views of her father, and that it
might yet be easy for him, noble and rich, to win the day against such a
rival as Tragaduros.

Still, discouragement often seized upon Fabian; he loved the daughter of
the haciendado with his whole soul; and the thought of owing her love
only to the treasures that he might possess, distressed him. Moreover,
he felt that the ardent and jealous affection of the Canadian, had
founded on him the sole aim of his life, and that, like the eagle who
carries away his young one and places it in an eyrie, inaccessible to
the hand of man, Bois-Rose, who had forever quitted civilised life,
wished to make of him his inseparable companion in the desert; and that,
to disappoint the old man would be to throw a shadow over his whole
future life. As yet, no confidence as to their future had been
exchanged between them; but in face of a love that he believed hopeless,
and of the ardent, though secret wishes of the man who now acted as a
father to him, and who would half break his heart at a separation,
Fabian had generously and silently sacrificed his tastes and hopes that
would not die. He who had but to hold out his hand to seize the things
that the whole world desires--riches, titles, and honours--was like one
whose life tortured by an unhappy love, disclaiming the future, seeks
within the cloister forgetfulness of the past. For Fabian de Mediana,
the desert was the cloister; and his mother once revenged, it only
remained to him to bury himself in it forever. Sad and inefficacious,
as a remedy, would be solitude, with its mysterious voice, and the
ardent contemplations that it awakens, for a passion so fondly awakened
in the young heart of Fabian.

One single hope remained to him--that amidst the ever-renewed dangers of
an adventurous life, the day was not far distant when his life would be
cut short in some contest with the Indians, or in one of those desperate
attempts that he meditated against the murderer of his mother. He had
carefully hidden from the Canadian the love that he buried in the depths
of his heart; and it was in the silence of the night that he dared to
look into his own bosom. Then, like the light which shines in the
horizon above great cities, and which the traveller contemplates with
joy, a radiant and cherished image rose before his eyes in the desert,
standing on that breach in the wall of the hacienda, where his last