"Take my advice, Signor de Luna, and leave your niece to herself on this subject: a young female heart cannot be made, like one of your soldiers, to march and countermarch at the word of command; it is, besides, of very frail materials, and, when once injured or broken, can never be repaired. The happiness of one so dear to you as your niece, may be destroyed forever, by forcing her into a match she detests; but it will then be too late to repair your fault, and it will always be to you a subject of the bitterest regret and unavailing remorse." With these words he departed. But the governor, although convinced by the priest's arguments, and set into profound meditation by his last words, was one of those people, of whom we see so many at every step we take through life, who ask advice when they need it, are convinced of its soundness when given, and yet, though their natural good sense assents to dispassionate reasoning, return to their old, foolish, absurd, and ruinous opinions and intentions. Don Gaspar, therefore, although convinced that he was a fool, and an unfeeling relation in attempting to force his niece into a marriage with such a worthless puppy as he readily admitted the proposed lover was in every respect, continued to adhere to his original intention, which he thought best, however, to defer for a time. CHAPTER V. There is as weighty reason For secresy in love, as treason. Love is a burglarer, a felon, That at the window-eye doth steal in To rob the heart, and with his prey Steals out again a closer way. HUDIBRAS. The morning of the day appointed for the visit to the ship Orion rose as pure, and clear, and beautiful, as though no party of pleasure was intended, but not more pure, and clear, and beautiful, than the weather always is during the dry season of tropical climates, which, with the cool and refreshing sea-breeze, is one of the delights of those climates that I forgot to particularise in its proper place. With us of the temperate section of this round world the case is altogether different--the day appointed a week beforehand for a party of pleasure being almost invariably rainy, blowy, haily, snowy, drizzly, foggy, cold, uncomfortable, villainous weather; or else so hot that the mere act of breathing is too much for feeble human nature--and this, too, whether the party is made for sailing, riding, rambling about in the woods, or even for dancing, or tea-drinking, or whist-playing in a warm, comfortable room. This is, perhaps, one reason why geographers call our part of the globe the temperate zone; because all our proposed and anticipated pleasures, that depend in the slightest possible degree upon the weather, are sure to be tempered and qualified by some unexpected botheration on the part of the weather.