Is it wonderful that Don Fernando escorted her to the gate of the castle? Or that proud Don Alphonso did not invite him in, notwithstanding his daughter's imploring looks, even after he had heard from her lips of her deliverance? Are my daughters very much astonished that little perfumed notes, exquisitely written, doubtless with little kissing doves stamped in the corners, and signed 'Yours till death,' passed between the two castles? There was a prodigious waste of sentiment on the occasion, quite enough to set up twenty pairs of well-behaved, proper, respectable lovers. It came to such a pass that Fernando declared, and I believe the fellow was in earnest, that existence would be intolerable to him unless he could meet his Isabel; and the lady, although feeling some qualms of conscience about the matter, agreed to see him daily, when the evening star rose in the sky. So, while her poor old father--good easy man! thought that his daughter was in her chamber, or piously engaged in the oratory saying her _Ave Marias_ and _Pater Nosters_, and singing a vesper hymn to the Virgin, the naughty girl had gone by a secret passage underground to a wood at some distance, where she met her betrothed. This passage is said to begin in one of the chambers of the castle, and winding along in the wall, to proceed downward towards the dungeons underground, and then to pass away to the wood already mentioned. It was originally intended, no doubt, as a means of escape, or of communication with the outer world, in case of a siege; but, at that time, it had almost passed into oblivion. After the events I am relating, the outlet into the wood was stopped up, and where the passage is to be found no one knows: so that if Clara wishes to imitate the conduct of her beautiful kinswoman, and to arrange clandestine meetings, she will have to spoil the romance of the proceeding by quietly walking through the open gate. But at length, some prying eyes found out these nocturnal interviews, and great was the rage of Don Alphonso. The lovers were seized, brought back in tribulation to the castle, and imprisoned, one in her chamber, the other in a dungeon. But love finds many devices: whether it was a golden key that opened her door, or whether it was her eloquent tongue and pleading looks, I know not, but certain it is that in the dead of night, when all but two in the castle were sunk in profound slumber, a fair lady softly stepped into her father's apartment, drew a large bunch of keys from under his pillow, and proceeding down to the dungeons by the secret passage, set Don Fernando at liberty! Soon did they breathe the sweet, fresh air of freedom: soon did they find their way to the territory of the Count de Velasquez, and to the chapel where an obedient priest spoke over their kneeling forms those words which can never be unsaid, by which Holy Mother Church sanctions the union of loving hearts.