Suddenly a thought seemed to suggest itself to his
mind. Seizing his guitar, from a corner of his room, he threw a thin
military cloak about his form, and putting on a foraging cap, passed
the sentinel, and strolled towards the Plato! How well he remembered
the associations of the place, as he paused now for a moment in the
shadow of the broad walls of the barracks. He stood there but for a
moment, then drawing nearer to the house of Don Gonzales, he touched
the strings of his guitar with a master hand, and sung with a clear,
musical voice one of those exquisite little serenades with which the
Spanish language abounds.
The song did not awake Isabella, though just beneath her window. She
heard it, nevertheless, and in the half-waking, half-dreaming state
in which she was, perhaps enjoyed it even with keener sense than she
would have done if quite aroused. She dreamed of love, and of
Lorenzo Bezan; she thought all was forgotten-all forgiven, and that
he was her accepted lover. But this was in her sleep-awake, she
would not have felt prepared to say yet, even to herself, whether
she really loved him, or would listen to his address; awake, there
was still a lingering pride in her bosom, too strong for easy
removal.
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