grateful,
and manifest it in every look and accent? Very improper it was,
certainly, as I said before, for a daughter to think of a young man
until her parents' permission is given; but I have heard of one or two
other instances in which this occurred; and before either made the
discovery who the agreeable companion was, when, of course, if they were
dutiful, antagonism and animosity would have filled their bosoms, they
were both unmistakably, undeniably, desperately in love!

Is it wonderful that Don Fernando escorted her to the gate of the
castle? Or that proud Don Alphonso did not invite him in,
notwithstanding his daughter's imploring looks, even after he had heard
from her lips of her deliverance? Are my daughters very much astonished
that little perfumed notes, exquisitely written, doubtless with little
kissing doves stamped in the corners, and signed 'Yours till death,'
passed between the two castles? There was a prodigious waste of
sentiment on the occasion, quite enough to set up twenty pairs of
well-behaved, proper, respectable lovers. It came to such a pass that
Fernando declared, and I believe the fellow was in earnest, that
existence would be intolerable to him unless he could meet his Isabel;
and the lady, although feeling some qualms of conscience about the
matter, agreed to see him daily, when the evening star rose in the sky.
So, while her poor old father--good easy man! thought that his daughter
was in her chamber, or piously engaged in the oratory saying her _Ave
Marias_ and _Pater Nosters_, and singing a vesper hymn to the Virgin,
the naughty girl had gone by a secret passage underground to a wood at
some distance, where she met her betrothed.

This passage is said to begin in one of the chambers of the castle, and
winding along in the wall, to proceed downward towards the dungeons
underground, and then to pass away to the wood already mentioned. It was
originally intended, no doubt, as a means of escape, or of communication
with the outer world, in case of a siege; but, at that time, it had
almost passed into oblivion. After the events I am relating, the outlet
into the wood was stopped up, and where the passage is to be found no
one knows: so that if Clara wishes to imitate the conduct of her
beautiful kinswoman, and to arrange clandestine meetings, she will have
to spoil the romance of the proceeding by quietly walking through the
open gate.

But at length, some prying eyes found out these noct