Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 5).djvu/308

"Remain" cried the young man, passionately. "Remain to see you in the arms of another? Never!"

As he moved towards the door, Rosita sprang towards him with outstretched arms.

"And what if it is you whom I love, Stephano? What if I have never loved anyone but you?" A thunderbolt would hardly have produced more effect than did these words.

"You love me?" he repeated, approaching his cousin. "Rosita, for mercy's sake, repeat those words once more, so that I may be sure of having heard aright."

"Yes, I love you," repeated the young girl, tenderly; "no one but you! Will you stay now?"

"For ever, if you wish it!" cried the enraptured youth, throwing down his gun and pistols. "Look at me, Rosita, that I may read in your eyes that word which gives me life, and which I have waited for so long. How blind and foolish I have been! But that will be all right now, will it not, my beloved?" As he spoke he embraced her passionately. By both of them the world was forgotten.

Through the open window came the clink of spurs and rattling of sabres. This sound, to which Stephano and Rosita were deaf, struck on the ear of Don Pedro and paralyzed him with terror.

"Remember Lieutenant Dulaurier!"

"Stephano!" he cried at last. "Remember Lieutenant Dulaurier!"

"Ah!" groaned Stephano, rudely tornfrom his ecstasy of happiness; and he fixed his gaze upon his cousin.

The girl had not even heard Don Pedro.

"Rosita," said her lover, "you say you love me, but you have a fiancé!"

"Dulaurier!" cried the startled girl. "Great Heaven! pardon me, I had forgotten."

"If this man," continued Stephano, "came here to claim your promise, you would reply, would you not, that friendship alone, not love, had drawn you towards him, and that your hand, promised when you hardly knew what you did, would now be given without your heart?"

"Yes, that is what I should answer; but he is not likely to come here, Stephano."

"And what if he were here already?" asked an impressive voice.

Don Pedro at the same time stepped forward between the young people, and before the severe face of the Spaniard their eyes drooped.

"Father!" faltered the young man.

"Silence!" cried the old man. "Your