Monte-Cristos Daughter | Page 6

dark, glowing eyes and their subtile fire seemed to melt his very soul. The close, sultry atmosphere, laden with heavy, intoxicating perfumes, was fraught with a delirious influence well calculated to set the blood aflame and promote the explosion of pent-up love. The thick, green foliage enclosed the pair as in a verdant cloud, effectually concealing them from observation. The opportunity was irresistible. Giovanni drew closer to his fascinating companion, so closely that her fragrant breath came full in his face, utterly subjecting him and totally obliterating all caution, everything save his absorbing passion for the palpitating girl whose slight, but clear-cut form, gracefully-outlined beneath her flowing, half-oriental garments, touched his. Suddenly carried away by a powerful transport, he threw his arm around the young girl's yielding waist and drew her without resistance upon his bosom, where she lay, gazing up into his flushed, excited countenance with an indescribable, voluptuous charm, mingled with thorough confidence and unhesitating innocence. Panting in his clasp, her ruby lips partly opened as if for breath, and the ardent Italian hastily, recklessly imprinted a fiery kiss upon them. Zuleika, with an almost imperceptible movement, returned this chaste, but ravishing salute.
"Oh! how I love you!" murmured Giovanni, quivering from head to foot in his wild ecstasy, and clasping the lovely girl still tighter.
She made no verbal response, but did not stir, did not strive to extricate herself from his warm embrace This was a sufficient answer for the quick Italian. Zuleika, the beautiful Zuleika, returned his love, favored his suit. His joy approached delirium.
"Oh! Zuleika," he whispered, gazing directly into her night black eyes, "you love me, I am sure! Give me the treasures of your virgin heart! Be mine--be my wife!"
"Oh! Giovanni," returned the quivering girl, in a low, but sweetly modulated voice, "I do love you--God alone knows how much!--but I am too young to be your wife! I am only a child, not yet out of school. My father would not hear of my marrying for several years to come. Can you not wait?"
"It will be a hard task, Zuleika," answered the young man, excitedly; "but, still, I will wait if you give me a lover's hope. Promise to marry me when you are at liberty to do so, nay, swear it, and I shall be satisfied!"
"I can neither promise nor swear it, Giovanni, without my father's approval and consent. He is a wise, experienced and thoughtful man, tender and mild to every one he loves, though hard and implacable to his enemies. Speak to him of me, of your love, of your wish. He will listen to you and he will not imperil his daughter's happiness. Go to him without delay, and rest assured that whatever he says or does will be for the best interests of us both."
She had released herself from his clasp and drawn slightly away from him, not in terror, not in prudery, not in coquetry, but as a measure of prudence. She felt intuitively that the wild, intense passion of her Italian adorer must be kept within discreet limits.
"I cannot speak to your father yet," replied Giovanni, hesitatingly. "He might listen to me, it is true; but he would treat our love as a mere childish fancy that time could not fail to dim, if not obliterate. I am deeply in earnest, Zuleika, and could not bear to be treated as a thoughtless, headlong stripling, who did not know his own mind. Ridicule, even in its mildest form, would fire my blood, fill me with mad projects of revenge. I prefer not to ask your father for your hand until certain of a favorable reception of my suit. You comprehend my scruples, do you not, Zuleika? I love you too dearly not to win you when I ask!"
"But you will speak to my father?" said the girl, in faltering tones.
"Yes, darling, oh! yes; but not until that hated convent school has ceased to oppose its barriers between us. When you have left it, when you have completed the education the Count designs for you, I will seek your father and ask you of him for my wife; until then, until I can with safety speak, at least promise me that you will love no other man, encourage no other suitor."
"That I will do," responded the girl, joyously. "Rest assured I will love no other man, encourage no other suitor!"
Unable to control himself, the Viscount again clasped the object of his adoration in his arms, and again their lips met in a long, passionate kiss of love.
So it was settled, and Zuleika went to the convent school of the Sacred Heart, feeling that her happiness was assured, but impatient of and dissatisfied with the long delay that must necessarily intervene before the realization of her hopes, the dawn