Time did not pass slowly, however. They did not read, you may be assured, though books were plentifully strewed about, as the French had been lighting their pipes with them; but Isidora took to teaching Quentin the language of the fan, as spoken or used at the bull-fight, the theatre, on the prado, or elsewhere, and with such a pair of eyes beaming on him, over, under, or through the sticks of the aforesaid fan, he proved an apt scholar. Who would have been otherwise? He taught her his name, at which she laughed very much, and thought it an odd one. Ere the noon of the second day, they had made great progress in their friendship, and, circumstanced as they were, could they have failed to do so? Isolated and without resource, save in each other's dangerous society, they could scarcely be ever separate in that huge deserted house, in which they were besieged by the weather. That the impulsive Spanish girl had conceived a strong affection for Quentin was evident from her occasional silence, her palpitation, her changing look, and the half-suppressed fire of her dark eyes, when he approached or spoke to her; then it would seem, that as he grew bewildered and timid, she became bold and unconstrained. It would be difficult to trace the workings and describe the struggles of Donna Isidora's heart in the growing passion she felt for Quentin--the mere result of accidents which she could not control, and a propinquity which she could not avoid; or how rapidly the brief self-delusion of sisterhood and platonic affection melted away before the warm and impulsive nature of her character; how reason weakened as passion grew strong, and how she resolved to bend him to her will, for in mind and race, rather more than years, she was much his senior. She knew that Spain was almost lawless now; that ties were broken, the bonds of society loosed, and that civil order, such as it was, had disappeared amid the anarchy consequent to the French invasion: hence a hundred wild schemes coursed through her busy brain. She even hoped to lure him into the guerilla ranks, or to fly with her to some remote part of the provinces, where they could never more be traced; to the mountains of Estrella, the Sierra de Oca, or the dark and wooded ranges of the Sierra Morena, where, forgotten alike by friend and foe, they could live on unknown. Such were her vague ideas for the future. For the present, it sufficed her that she loved Quentin, and that he must be taught to love her in return. On the other hand, it is difficult to define exactly the feeling which Quentin entertained for his young Spanish friend. Of her wonderful beauty he was by no means insensible. Was it platonic regard that _he_ felt? We should not think so at his years, and more especially as we are disinclined to believe in such love at all. Then what the deuce was it? the reader may ask. Flirtation, perhaps--"playing with fire," certainly.