"_Si senor--ciertamente_!" responded the Poblano, who must have supposed me insane, "Dolores Villa-Senor; or Lola, if you prefer it short: that is the lady's name. _Carrambo_! what is there strange about it? Every _chiquitito_ in the streets of Puebla knows _her_." My tongue was stopped. I made no further inquiry. I had heard enough to tell me I had been chicaned. She who had passed was the woman I loved--the same who had invited me to the Alameda. There could be no mistake about that, nor aught else--only that her name was _Dolores_, and _not Mercedes_! I had been made the catspaw of a heartless coquette! CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR. A PARTING GLANCE AT PUEBLA. From that hour I felt that Puebla was no place for me. Any _metier_ but that of the singed moth. I determined thenceforth to shun the candle that had cruelly scorched, and might only scorch me more. Attractive as was the light that had lured me, I resolved never more to let my eyes look upon it. It had proved too resplendent. It would not be with my own will, if I should ever again see _Dolores_ Villa-Senor. How easy thus to talk--thus to resolve--during the first throes of a wounded vanity--when the spirit is strengthened by its discomfiture. But ah! how difficult to maintain the determination! Hercules had no such task. I endeavoured to fortify myself with reflection: by conjuring up every thought that might restore my indifference, or enable me to forget her. It was all to no purpose. Such memories could only be chastened by time. They were not universally painful. It was something to think that I had interested, even in the slightest degree, one so grand, so famed, so incomparable; and there were moments when the remembrance soothed me. It was but a poor recompense for the sacrifice I had made, and the suffering I endured. In vain I invoked my pride--my vanity, if you prefer so to call it. It no longer availed me. Crushed in the encounter, it made one last spasmodic attempt, and then sank under a sense of humiliation. Untrue what I had been told by other tongues. They must have been sheer flatterers, those friends who had called me _handsome_. Compared with Francisco Moreno, I was as Satyr to Hyperion. So must Dolores have thought? At times, reflecting thus, I could not help feeling vengeful, and dwelling on schemes of retaliation,--of which both were the object. By good fortune none appeared feasible, or even possible. I was helpless as Chatelar, when the sated queen no longer looked lovingly upon him. There was no hope except in absence--that grand balsam of the broken heart. I knew it by a past experience. Fortune favoured me with the chance of trying it the second time; and soon. Three days after that sweet encounter in the Cathedral--and the bitter one in the Alameda--our bugles summoned us to get ready; and, on the fourth, we commenced moving towards the capital of Mexico.