Maruja | Page 8

and smiled.
He seized her hands passionately. "No, no! you shall hear me--you shall understand me. I love YOU, Maruja--you, and you alone. God knows I can not help it--God knows I would not help it if I could. Hear me. I will be calm. No one can hear us where we stand. I am not mad. I am not a traitor! I frankly admired your sister. I came here to see her. Beyond that, I swear to you, I am guiltless to her--to you. Even she knows no more of me than that. I saw you, Maruja. From that moment I have thought of nothing--dreamed of nothing else."
"That is--three, four, five days and one afternoon ago! You see, I remember. And now you want--what?"
"To let me love you, and you only. To let me be with you. To let me win you in time, as you should be won. I am not mad, though I am desperate. I know what is due to your station and mine--even while I dare to say I love you. Let me hope, Maruja, I only ask to hope."
She looked at him until she had absorbed all the burning fever of his eyes, until her ears tingled with his passionate voice, and then--she shook her head.
"It can not be, Carroll--no! never!"
He drew himself up under the blow with such simple and manly dignity that her eyes dropped for the moment. "There is another, then?" he said, sadly.
"There is no one I care for better than you. No! Do not be foolish. Let me go. I tell you that because you can be nothing to me--you understand, to ME. To my sister Amita, yes."
The young soldier raised his head coldly. "I have pressed you hard, Miss Saltonstall--too hard, I know, for a man who has already had his answer; but I did not deserve this. Good-by."
"Stop," she said, gently. "I meant not to hurt you, Captain Carroll. If I had, it is not thus I would have done. I need not have met you here. Would you have loved me the less if I had avoided this meeting?"
He could not reply. In the depths of his miserable heart, he knew that he would have loved her the same.
"Come," she said, laying her hand softly on his arm, "do not be angry with me for putting you back only five days to where you were when you first entered our house. Five days is not much of happiness or sorrow to forget, is it, Carroll--Captain Carroll?" Her voice died away in a faint sigh. "Do not be angry with me, if-- knowing you could be nothing more--I wanted you to love my sister, and my sister to love you. We should have been good friends--such good friends."
"Why do you say, 'Knowing it could he nothing more'?" said Carroll, grasping her hand suddenly. "In the name of Heaven, tell me what you mean!"
"I mean I can not marry unless I marry one of my mother's race. That is my mother's wish, and the will of her relations. You are an American, not of Spanish blood."
"But surely this is not your determination?"
She shrugged her shoulders. "What would you? It is the determination of my people."
"But knowing this"--he stopped; the quick blood rose to his face.
"Go on, Captain Carroll. You would say, Knowing this, why did I not warn you? Why did I not say to you when we first met, You have come to address my sister; do not fall in love with me--I can not marry a foreigner."
"You are cruel, Maruja. But, if that is all, surely this prejudice can be removed? Why, your mother married a foreigner--an American."
"Perhaps that is why," said the girl, quietly. She cast down her long lashes, and with the point of her satin slipper smoothed out the soft leaves of the clover at her feet. "Listen; shall I tell you the story of our house? Stop! some one is coming. Don't move; remain as you are. If you care for me, Carroll, collect yourself, and don't let that man think he has found US ridiculous." Her voice changed from its tone of slight caressing pleading to one of suppressed pride. "HE will not laugh much, Captain Carroll; truly, no."
The figure of Garnier, bright, self-possessed, courteous, appeared at the opening of the labyrinth. Too well-bred to suggest, even in complimentary raillery, a possible sentimental situation, his politeness went further. It was so kind in them to guide an awkward stranger by their voices to the places where he could not stupidly intrude!
"You are just in time to interrupt or to hear a story that I have been threatening to tell," she said, composedly; "an old Spanish legend of this house. You are in the majority now, you two, and can stop me if