was not at fault. In a
few moments Don Luis lightly leaped the hedge, and without a moment's
hesitation sought the shadow of the fig-tree. As he approached, Antonia
looked at him with a new interest. It was not only that he loved Isabel,
but that Isabel loved him. She had given him sympathy before, now she
gave him a sister's affection.

"How handsome he is!" she thought. "How gallant he looks in his velvet
and silver and embroidered jacket! And how eager are his steps! And how
joyful his face! He is the kind of Romeo that Shakespeare dreamed about!
Isabel is really an angel to him. He would really die for her. What
has this Spanish knight of the sixteenth century to do in Texas in the
nineteenth century?"

He answered her mental question in his own charming way. He was so
happy, so radiantly happy, so persuasive, so compelling, that Antonia
granted him, without a word, the favor his eyes asked for. And the
lovers hardly heard the excuse she made; they understood nothing of it,
only that she would be reading in the myrtle walk for one hour, and, by
so doing, would protect them from intrusion.

One whole hour! Isabel had thought the promise a perfect magnificence of
opportunity{.??} But how swiftly it went. Luis had not told her the half
of his love and his hopes. He had been forced to speak of politics and
business, and every such word was just so many stolen from far sweeter
words--words that fell like music from his lips, and were repeated with
infinite power from his eyes. Low words, that had the pleading of a
thousand voices in them; words full of melody, thrilling with romance;
poetical, and yet real as the sunshine around them.

In lovers of a colder race, bound by conventional ties, and a dress
rigorously divested of every picturesque element, such wooing might have
appeared ridiculous; but in Don Luis, the most natural thing about
it was its extravagance. When he knelt at the feet of his beloved
and kissed her hands, the action was the unavoidable outcome of his
temperament. When he said to her, "Angel mio! you are the light of my
darkness, the perfume of all flowers that bloom for me, the love of my
loves, my life, my youth, my lyre, my star, had I a thousand souls with
which to love, I would give them all to you!" he believed every word he
uttered, and he uttered every word with the passion of a believer.

He stirred into life also in the heart of Isabel a love as living as
his own. In that hour she stepp