Suddenly his whole manner changed; he rose quickly to his feet, and
lifting his cap gracefully, he saluted and acknowledged the
particular notice of a lady who bent partially forward from a richly
mounted volante drawn by as richly it caparisoned horse, and driven
by as richly dressed a calesaro. The manner of the young officer
from that moment was the very antipodes of what it had been a few
moments before. A change seemed to have come over the spirit of his
dream. His fine military figure became erect and dignified, and a
slight indication of satisfied pride was just visible in the fine
lines of his expressive lips. As he passed on his way, after a
momentary pause, he met General Harero, who stiffly acknowledged his
military salute, with anything but kindness expressed in the stern
lines of his forbidding countenance. He even took some pains to
scowl upon the young soldier as they passed each other.

But what cared Lieutenant Bezan for his frowns? Had not the belle of
the city, the beautiful, the peerless, the famed Senorita Isabella
Gonzales just publicly saluted him?-that glorious being whose
transcendent beauty had been the theme of every tongue, and whose
loveliness had enslaved him from the first moment he had looked upon
her-just two years previous, when he first came from Spain. Had not
this high-born and proud lady publicly saluted him? Him, a poor
lieutenant of infantry, who had never dared to lift his eyes to meet
her own before, however deep and ardently he might have worshipped
her in secret. What cared the young officer that his commander had
seen fit thus to frown upon him? True, he realized the power of
military discipline, and particularly of the Spanish army; but he
forgot all else now, in the fact that Isabella Gonzales had publicly
saluted him in the paths of the Paseo.