The feverish state of his body had communicated itself to his mind, and for several days and nights, in the solitude of his chamber, he brooded over the memory of his native place, enduring the acuteness of the nostalgia in no small degree; and even the fair Catalina, with her songs, her guitar, and her castanets, failed to enliven him, at least for a time; his whole pleasure—and a gloomy pleasure it was—being to brood over the memory of his far-off home. The dreams that haunted the broken slumbers which the pain of his wound permitted him to snatch, served but to increase the disorder; and often, from a pleasing vision of his paternal tower with its mountain loch and pathless pine forests, of his white-haired sire as he last beheld him, or of Alice Lisle smiling and beautiful, with her bright eyes and curling tresses, twining her arms endearingly round him, and laying her soft cheek to his, he was awakened by some confounded circumstance, which again brought on him the painful and soul-absorbing lethargy which weighed down every faculty, rendering him careless of every present object save the miniature of Alice. The paleness of his complexion, and the intense sadness of his eye, puzzled his medical attendant, Doctor Mendizabal, but neither to him nor to Donna Catalina, who used the most bewitching entreaties, would the forlorn young soldier confess the cause of his dejection,—concealment of the mental feelings from others beins; a concomitant of the disease. So each formed their own opinions. Mendizabal concluded it to be loss of blood; and the lady, after consulting her cousin and companion, Inesella de Truxillo, supposed that he must unquestionably be in love,—what else could render so handsome an _officiale_ so very sad? This conclusion gave him additional interest with her; and certes, Alice Lisle would little have admired the attendance upon Ronald’s sick couch of a rival, and one so dangerously beautiful; but her fears might have decreased, had she seen how incessantly, during the days he was confined to his bed, he gazed upon the little miniature which Louis Lisle had given as a parting gift. Concealing it from the view of others, he watched it with untiring eyes, until, in the fervency of his fancy, the features seemed to become animated and expanded,—the sparkling eyes to fill with light and tenderness,—the pale cheek to flush, and the dark curls which fell around it to wave,—the coral lips to smile; while he almost imagined that he heard the soft murmurs of her voice mingling with the gurgle of the Isla and the rustle of the foliage on the banks, where they were wont to play and gambol in infancy.