During that evening, from a thousand little circumstances which it is needless to rehearse, it was evident to Ronald that Louis Lisle was deeply enamoured of the beautiful Virginia; and that she was not unfavourable to him was also manifest, although she took every means to conceal it: but Ronald had a sharp eye for these matters. What the opinion of the proud old duke might be on such a subject it was not difficult to say; and his conscience would not in the least have prevented him from employing the poniard of some matador to rid his family of such a suitor. However, his mind was at that moment too much taken up with political schemes to permit him to observe the growing passion between his daughter and the young Scottish subaltern, to whom twenty days' residence in his palace had given every opportunity to press his suit that a lover could desire.
The party at the De T---- palace broke up about eleven o'clock, and ruminating on the probabilities of Louis's winning the donna, should he really propose for her hand, Ronald passed slowly through the marble square, and down a street leading towards his billet, which was near the Calle Mayor. A gush of light, streaming into the darkness through the open portal and traceried windows of an illuminated chapel, invited him to enter, in expectation of beholding some solemn religious ceremony; but the building was entirely empty, and the blaze of light proceeded from some hundreds of tapers burning around the gilded shrine of the patron saint of Aranjuez. From this spot a strong flood of crimson light glared through the nave and chancel, tinging with the hue of blood the black marble pavement, the slender pillars, and the groined roof of fretted stone work. Many mouldy portraits of saints adorned the walls; around the lighted shrine were hung certain strange memorials, placed there by the piety of those whom the saint was supposed to have cured. Crutches, even wooden legs and many stucco casts of deformed limbs, were there displayed, all doubtless the work of cunning priests, to impose upon the credulity of the Spaniards. But what chiefly raised his wonder, was some hundred little images of children, with which the place was absolutely crowded.