Cosme!"

"_A dios, Capitan! adios! adios_!"

I held out my hand to the younger of the girls, who instantly caught it
and pressed it to her lips. It was the action of a child. Guadalupe
followed the example of her sister, but evidently with a degree of
reserve. What, then, should have caused this difference in their
manner?

In the next moment we were ascending the stairway.

"Lucky dog!" growled the major. "Take a ducking myself for that."

"Both beautiful, by Jove!" said Clayley; "but of all the women I ever
saw, give me `Mary of the Light'!"

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

THE SCOUT CONTINUED, WITH A VARIETY OF REFLECTIONS.

Love is a rose growing upon a thorny bramble. There is jealousy in the
very first blush of a passion. No sooner has a fair face made its
impress on the heart than hopes and fears spring up in alternation.
Every action, every word, every look is noted and examined with a
jealous scrutiny; and the heart of the lover, changing like the
chameleon, takes its hues from the latest sentiment that may have
dropped from the loved one's lips. And then the various looks, words,
and actions, the favourable with the unfavourable, are recalled, and by
a mental process classified and marshalled against each other, and
compared and balanced with as much exactitude as the _pros_ and
_contras_ of a miser's bank-book; and in this process we have a new
alternation of hopes and fears.

Ah, love! we could write a long history of thy rise and progress; but it
is doubtful whether any of our readers would be a jot the wiser for it.
Most of them ere this have read that history in their own hearts.

I felt and knew that I was in love. It had come like a thought, as it
comes upon all men whose souls are attuned to vibrate under the mystical
impressions of the beautiful. And well I knew _she_ was beautiful. I
saw its unfailing index in those oval developments--the index, too, of
the intellectual; for experience had taught me that _intellect takes a
shape_; and that those peculiarities of form that we admire, without
knowing why, are but the material illustrations of the diviner
principles of mind.

The eye, too, with its almond outline, and wild, half-Indian, half Arab
expression--the dark tracery over the lip, so rarely seen in the
lineaments of her sex--even these were attractions. There was something
picturesque, something strange, something almost fierce, in her aspect;
and yet it was this indefinable somet