"Forget! never!" said Gordon. "These last two years have been the happiest in my life so far. Wherever I go I shall look upon this country as my second home, and shall long for the day when I can return to it and to you." "Then you will come back?" asked Dolores eagerly. "That is my firm purpose. As yet I am only a subaltern and must rejoin my regiment, but when the war is over I shall come back; I shall have one great joy if the 71st has the luck to be ordered on active service, that in my next campaign I shall be fighting for you and not against you." "Do not forget to say that in your speech at the banquet to-morrow," said Marcelino. "Are you clever at making speeches?" "I never made one in my life," replied Gordon. "Then if you do not prepare one you will simply say two words and sit down again, and every one will be disappointed." "I hope I shall manage to say something more than two words, I ought to after all the kindness I have received, but of a set speech I am incapable." "Without preparation that is very probable; but if I were to write down for you some hints, you could easily make them into a speech. You may safely say things that none of us dare to say, such as I have often heard you say in intimate conversation. You will be the only Englishman present." "That is a fact, and I will speak out boldly as an Englishman just what I think, but in preparing my speech some hints from you might be of service to me." "I will go and write them out for you at once," said Marcelino, and turning from them he left the room. Dolores and Lieutenant Gordon being left alone stood together at the window for some minutes without speaking. Dolores was the first to break the silence. "You are sorry to leave us, Mr Gordon," she said; "but it will give you great joy to see your own family again." "It will. You who have never been away from your own people cannot tell the joy there is in meeting again those you love after a long absence," replied Gordon. "But I can understand it, remember how long Marcelino was away from us; I was quite a little girl when he went to Cordova, but I used often to think of him and wonder what he would be like, and then when he did come back I was so proud of him. Your sisters are thinking about you now as I used to think about Marcelino." "I dare say they are, for this was my first experience of foreign service. I had no idea that I should come here when I left England, for we were sent to the Cape of Good Hope." "What things you will have to tell them! If you had never been----if you had not stopped with us you would never have known what it is to gallop over the Pampa." "And more than that, I should never have known you as I do know you. They know already what kind friends I have found here, how fortunate I have been. When I reach home I shall never be tired of talking to them about you."