He is better bred than the
other boys, but after all he is only a farmer's son, and while pleased
with his conquest as a testimony to her immature charms, she has
looked down upon him as quite an inferior order of being to herself.
But just now he appears to her in the desirable light of somebody to
bid good-bye to, to the end that she may be on a par with the other
girls whom she so envies. So she looks about for Perez.
And he, on his part, is looking about for her. That she, the Squire's
daughter, as far above him as a star, would care whether he went or
stayed, or would come to say good-bye to him, he had scarcely dared to
think. And yet how deeply has that thought, which he has scarcely
dared own, tinged all his other thinking! The martial glory that has
so dazzled his young imagination, how much of its glitter was but
reflected from a girl's eyes. As he looks about and not seeing her,
says, "She does not care, she will not come," the sword loses all its
sheen, and the nodding plume its charm, and his dreams of self-devotion
all their exhilaration.
"I came to bid you good-bye, Perez," says a voice behind him.
He wheels about, red, confused, blissful. Desire Edwards, dark and
sparkling as a gypsy, stands before him with her hand outstretched.
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