ave been younger."

"The painter! What painter? The portrait! What portrait, Senor?"

"I refer to your portrait, which I accidentally found hanging in my
apartment."

"Ah! by the mirror?"

"Yes, by the mirror," I answered sullenly.

"But, it is not _mine_, Senor Capitan."

"Ha!--how? Not yours?"

"No; it is the portrait of my cousin, Maria de Merced. They say we were
much alike."

My heart expanded. My whole frame quivered under the influence of
joyful emotions.

"And the gentleman?" I faltered out.

"Don Emilio? He was cousin's lover--_huyeron_," (they eloped).

As she repeated the last word she turned her head away, and I thought
there was a sadness in her manner.

I was about to speak, when she continued:

"It was her room--we have not touched anything."

"And where is your cousin now?"

"We know not."

"There is a mystery," thought I. I pressed the subject no farther. It
was nothing to me now. My heart was happy.

"Let us walk farther, Lupita."

She turned her eyes upon me with an expression of wonder. The change in
my manner--so sudden--how was she to account for it? I could have knelt
before her and explained all. Reserve disappeared, and the confidence
of the preceding night was fully restored.

We wandered along under the _guardarayas_, amidst sounds and scenes
suggestive of love and tenderness. Love! We heard it in the songs of
the birds--in the humming of the bees--in the voices of all nature
around us. We felt it in our own hearts. The late cloud had passed,
making the sky still brighter than before; the reaction had heightened
our mutual passion to the intensity of non-resistance; and we walked on,
her hand clasped in mine. We had eyes only for each other.

We reached a clump of cocoa-trees; one of them had fallen, and its
smooth trunk offered a seat, protected from the sun by the shadowy
leaves of its fellows. On this we sat down. There was no resistance--
no reasoning process--no calculation of advantages and chances, such as
is too often mingled with the noble passion of love. We felt nothing of
this--nothing but that undefinable impulse which had entered our hearts,
and to whose mystical power neither of us dreamed of offering
opposition. Delay and duty were alike forgotten.

"I shall ask the question now--I shall know my fate at once," were my
thoughts.

In the changing scenes of a soldier's life there is but little time for
the slow formalities, the