ully
dropped at his feet and which had withered over his heart ever since,
was to him.

The difficulties in the way of the exchange of those sweet nothings that
lovers love to dwell upon and the impossibility of any hoped for end to
their love making intensified their passion. Little or nothing had been
spoken between them, but each knew the other loved. For the first moment
the knowledge of that glorious fact had sufficed them--but afterwards
they wanted more. Having tasted, they would fain quaff deeply. But they
could see no way by which to manage the realization of their dreams.

The situation was complicated in every possible way for Alvarado. Had he
been a man of family like his friend, de Tobar, he would have gone
boldly to the Viceroy and asked for the hand of his daughter, in which
case he thought he would have met with no refusal; but, being ignorant
of his birth, having not even a legal right to the name he bore, he knew
that the proud old Hidalgo would rather see his daughter dead than
wedded to him. Of all the ancient splendors of the Spanish people there
was left them but one thing of which they could be proud--their ancient
name. De Lara, who belonged to one of the noblest and most distinguished
families of the Iberian Peninsula, would never consent to degrade his
line by allying his only daughter to a nobody, however worthy in other
respects the suitor might prove to be.

Again, had Mercedes' father been any other than the life-long patron and
friend to whom he literally owed everything that he possessed, such was
the impetuosity of Alvarado's disposition that, at every hazard, he
would have taken the girl by stealth or force from her father's
protection, made her his wife, and sought an asylum in England or
France, or wherever he could. So desperate was his state of mind, so
overwhelming his love that he would have shrunk from nothing to win her.
Yet just because the Viceroy had been a father to him, just because he
had loved him, had been unexampled in his kindness and consideration to
him, just because he reposed such absolutely unlimited confidence in
him, the young man felt bound in honor by fetters that he could not
break.

And there was his friendship for de Tobar. There were many young
gallants about the vice-regal court who, jealous of Alvarado's favor and
envious of his merits, had not scrupled in the face of his unknown
origin to sneer, to mock, or to slight--so far as it was safe to do
ei