As he moved towards the door, Rosita sprang towards him with outstretched arms. "And what if it is you whom I love, Stephano? What if I have never loved anyone but you?" A thunderbolt would hardly have produced more effect than did these words. "You love me?" he repeated, approaching his cousin. "Rosita, for mercy's sake, repeat those words once more, so that I may be sure of having heard aright." "Yes, I love you," repeated the young girl, tenderly; "no one but you! Will you stay now?" "For ever, if you wish it!" cried the enraptured youth, throwing down his gun and pistols. "Look at me, Rosita, that I may read in your eyes that word which gives me life, and which I have waited for so long. How blind and foolish I have been! But that will be all right now, will it not, my beloved?" As he spoke he embraced her passionately. By both of them the world was forgotten. Through the open window came the clink of spurs and rattling of sabres. This sound, to which Stephano and Rosita were deaf, struck on the ear of Don Pedro and paralyzed him with terror. "Stephano!" he cried at last. "Remember Lieutenant Dulaurier!" [Illustration: "REMEMBER LIEUTENANT DULAURIER!"] "Ah!" groaned Stephano, rudely torn from his ecstasy of happiness; and he fixed his gaze upon his cousin. The girl had not even heard Don Pedro. "Rosita," said her lover, "you say you love me, but you have a _fiancé!_" "Dulaurier!" cried the startled girl. "Great Heaven! pardon me, I had forgotten." "If this man," continued Stephano, "came here to claim your promise, you would reply, would you not, that friendship alone, not love, had drawn you towards him, and that your hand, promised when you hardly knew what you did, would now be given without your heart?" "Yes, that is what I should answer; but he is not likely to come here, Stephano." "And what if he were here already?" asked an impressive voice. Don Pedro at the same time stepped forward between the young people, and before the severe face of the Spaniard their eyes drooped. "Father!" faltered the young man. "Silence!" cried the old man. "Your duty is clear. What if Dulaurier were in the house, Rosita--what if, more faithful than you, he had come to claim his promise, made at the death-bed of your father? I ask you what you would answer." Trembling and submissive as a criminal before his judge, the young girl turned her eyes from Stephano to Don Pedro. "I should reply to Lieutenant Dulaurier that, before God and man, I am his betrothed bride, and that while he lives no other can be my husband." "Come then, my child, prepare to receive your _fiancé_," and Don Pedro held out his hand to his niece to lead her away. "You are destroying my happiness!" cried Stephano. "But in return I give you back your honour," replied Don Pedro. "Look after the lieutenant, for here come the guerillas!" and he went out.