The Heart's Secret; Or, the Fortunes of a Soldier: a Story of Love and the Low Latitudes. by Ballou, Maturin Murray, 1820-1895

With this reflection and similar thoughts upon his mind, he once more threw himself upon the hard damp floor, and after thinking long and tenderly of Isabella Gonzales and her brother, he once more dropped to sleep, but not until the morning gun had relieved the sentinels, and the drum had beat the reveille.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE FAREWELL.

THE apartment in Don Gonzales's house appropriated as Ruez's sleeping room, led out of the main reception hall, and adjoined that of his sister Isabella. Both rooms looked out upon the Plato, and over the Gulf Stream and outer portions of the harbor, where the grim Moro tower and its cannon frown over the narrow entrance of the inner bay. One vessel could hardly work its way in ship shape through the channel, but a thousand might lay safely at anchor inside this remarkably land-locked harbor. At the moment when we would introduce the reader to the house of the rich old Don Gonzales, Isabella had thrown herself carelessly upon a couch in her room, and half sighing, half dreaming while awake, was gazing out upon the waters that make up from the Caribbean Sea, at the southward, and now and then following with her eyes the trading crafts that skimmed the sparkling waters to the north.

As she gazed thus, she suddenly raised herself to a sitting position, as she heard the suppressed and most grievous sobs of some one near the room where she was, and rising, she approached the window to discover the cause of this singular sound. The noise that had excited her curiosity came from the next chamber, evidently, and that was her brother's. Stealing softly round to the entrance of his chamber, she went quietly in and surprised Ruez as lay grieving upon a couch with eyes filled with tears.

"Why, Ruez, what does this mean? Art sick, brother, that you are so depressed?" asked the beautiful girl, seating herself down by his side.

"Ay, sister, sick at heart," said the boy, with a deep drawn sigh.

"And why, Ruez?" she continued, gently parting the hair from his forehead.

"How can you ask such a question, sister? do you not know already?" he asked, turning his deep blue eyes full upon her.

"Perhaps not, brother," replied Isabella, struggling to suppress a sigh, while she turned her face away from her brother's searching glance.

"Do you not know, sister, that to-morrow Captain Bezan is sentenced to die?"

"True," said Isabella Gonzales, with an involuntary shudder, "I do know it, Ruez."

"And further, sister," continued the boy, sagely, "do you not know that we have been the indirect cause of this fearful sacrifice?"

"I do not see that, brother," said Isabella, quickly, as she turned her beautiful face fully upon her brother, inquiringly.