The Rebel Chief by Gustave Aimard

Dolores and Carmen were alone in the garden. Hidden like two timid turtle doves, in an arbour of orange, lemon, and flowering pomegranate trees, and were eagerly conversing. Doña María kept her room, through a slight indisposition -- such, at least, was the excuse she made to the young ladies for not keeping them company in the garden, but, in reality, she had shut herself up to read an important letter which don Jaime had sent her by a safe man.

The girls, free from all surveillance, were rejoicing their hearts by confiding to each other their simple and sweet secrets; a few words had sufficed to render any explanation between them unnecessary; hence there were no concealments or subterfuges, but an entire and unbounded confidence, a tacitly concluded union to help each other, and compel their swains to break a too lengthened silence, and let them read in their hearts the name of her whom each of them preferred. It is on this serious and interesting subject that the conversation of the young ladies turned at this moment. Although they had confessed to each other their mutual love, by a feeling of delicacy inseparable from every real passion, they hesitated and recoiled with a blush before the thought of urging the young men to declare themselves.