It may be supposed that I had but little appetite, for a true love fit always deprives one of that; but the dinner, which was both sumptuous and extravagant, by the number of dainties presented, must--as I reflected--have cost at least two of the ten doubloons I had lent to Prudentia--and would fain have given her; for it seemed altogether ungallant and intolerable to accept of them when offered back; but how was I to march without money, especially in an army like the Danish, where one had to pay for every thing, and where all plunderers were tied to a post and shot without mercy? We dined. I remarked that Prudentia had a very good appetite, which I considered unromantic, and unfavourable to myself; the cloth was removed, and we lingered over the _vino tinto de Alicante_, and some of the luscious fruits of her own sunny clime. Reclined on the soft down cushions of the sofa, with her long veil spread over her shoulders, the señora lay half at length like a Moorish queen, taking from time to time a grape or a sip of her sweet wine, and looking at me with roguish eyes, through lids half closed with fun and merriment; for as the fumes of the wine mounted into my brain, I gathered new courage, and spoke only of love--love--but in broken sentences; for between two circumstanced as we were--a young cavalier and a dark-eyed coquette, a soldier and a gay actress--it may easily be conceived that darling theme was paramount. I know not now all the tender and all the foolish things I said; but I remember that, at many of them, my pretty droll laughed immoderately. I sat by her side. In the last gleams of the sunset her glossy hair and radiant complexion were glancing with that glow of light that made her like a beautiful picture. We were conversing hand in hand, at least mine rested on hers--but quite by chance--when she suddenly proposed that, to pass the time, we should have a nice little game, when she would afford me an opportunity of getting back my doubloons with interest. The old slipshod dame Krumpel, who attended us, having been summoned, a pair of playing tables which stood in a corner--inlaid as for playing chess--were arranged beside the sofa, and I sat opposite Prudentia, who reclined among her cushions. Producing a pack of Spanish cards, she offered to teach the old Castilian game of ombre. I say Spanish cards, for they were essentially different from those used among us in Scotland (and against which King James VI. passed a law in the year 1621), having but forty-eight in the pack, being without a ten, and having the king represented by a crowned figure. As there is no queen, the next in rank is a knight, armed on all points, and designated _el caballero_. She taught me ombre certainly--but whether after a fashion of her own, or that of the Castilians, I know not; but I rapidly lost my dollars, which she arrayed in line on her own side of the table, with the most pretty and provoking air.