make
us comprehend our past, but there will never be enough to express our
coming happiness. Lay your hand upon my heart. Feel how it beats. Let us
promise before God, who sees and hears us, to be faithful to each other
throughout our lives. Here, take my ring--and give me yours."

"Give you my ring!" she said in terror.

"Why not?" asked Montefiore, uneasy at such artlessness.

"But our holy father the Pope has blessed it; it was put upon my finger
in childhood by a beautiful lady who took care of me, and who told me
never to part with it."

"Juana, you cannot love me!"

"Ah!" she said, "here it is; take it. You, are you not another myself?"

She held out the ring with a trembling hand, holding it tightly as she
looked at Montefiore with a clear and penetrating eye that questioned
him. That ring! all of herself was in it; but she gave it to him.

"Oh, my Juana!" said Montefiore, again pressing her in his arms. "I
should be a monster indeed if I deceived you. I will love you forever."

Juana was thoughtful. Montefiore, reflecting that in this first
interview he ought to venture upon nothing that might frighten a young
girl so ignorantly pure, so imprudent by virtue rather than from desire,
postponed all further action to the future, relying on his beauty, of
which he knew the power, and on this innocent ring-marriage, the hymen
of the heart, the lightest, yet the strongest of all ceremonies. For the
rest of that night, and throughout the next day, Juana's imagination was
the accomplice of her passion.

On this first evening Montefiore forced himself to be as respectful as
he was tender. With that intention, in the interests of his passion and
the desires with which Juana inspired him, he was caressing and unctuous
in language; he launched the young creature into plans for a new
existence, described to her the world under glowing colors, talked to
her of household details always attractive to the mind of girls, giving
her a sense of the rights and realities of love. Then, having agreed
upon the hour for their future nocturnal interviews, he left her happy,
but changed; the pure and pious Juana existed no longer; in the last
glance she gave him, in the pretty movement by which she brought her
forehead to his lips, there was already more of passion than a girl
should feel. Solitude, weariness of employments contrary to her nature
had brought this about. To make the daughter of the Maranas truly
virtuous, she oug