"I have vowed a solemn vow to Santa Anna. If you, brother of my heart, venture to-day into the arena, and the blessed saint bear you unharmed out of the terrible encounter, I will take the veil, and devote myself to her service for the rest of my life in the nunnery of Cordova. Judge what you risk, Alcala, before you ride into the Plaza de Toros. If, regardless of my prayers and my tears, you keep your fatal appointment, you lose either your sister or your life. You may return unharmed and victorious, but it will be but to see your only sister offer herself up as a thank-offering for your preservation. If you would miss your Inez, if you have ever loved her, break your dreadful engagement. I know too well what it will cost you to do so, but anything is better than the misery—the ruin which is before us all if you keep it!"
With this missive in her hand Inez returned to the archway. If Alcala were coming at all before going to the circus, by this time he would surely have come. The poor girl glanced up and down the street; there was not a single person to be seen, save a muleteer who chanced to be passing, and who turned in some surprise to see a señora standing alone at the entrance of a mansion. Teresa and Chico both being absent, Inez had no messenger to send with her letter, unless she employed the stranger whom chance had brought into her way. The lady beckoned to the muleteer to approach her, drew off her rosary—the only ornament which she wore—for money she had none, and gave the coral beads, with the letter, into the hand of the man.
"For the love of mercy," she cried, "hasten with this letter to Don Alcala de Aguilera, at the Posada de Quesada. Oh, delay not; go as for your life!"
"I know the illustrious caballero, señora," said the muleteer, with an air of respectful pity. "The lady shall have no cause to complain of my slackness; ere an hour be passed I will bring a reply."
Was it a satisfaction or a terror to Inez when that letter was despatched? Perhaps it was both. Various feelings struggled in her breast, and it would have been difficult, even to herself, to have decided which was uppermost there. Inez, though pious, according to her superstitious views of religion, had no inclination whatever for the prison life of a convent. It was only her intense, unselfish love for her brother which induced her to threaten him and herself with a separation which would be, she felt, to her a living death. Inez had, from infancy, clung with the fondest affection to Alcala, her only brother. He had been to her companion, tutor, friend; and since the death of their last surviving parent, had almost taken towards the orphan girl the place of a father. With Alcala, Inez had shared poverty, and had scarcely felt its burden. What luxury that wealth might have procured would have been to Inez like that of sitting beside or at the feet of Alcala, in the cool of the evening, enjoying the music of his guitar, or blending her voice with his own? Often too had Alcala read aloud to his sister, while her fingers plied the needle. Inez had specially loved to work for her brother, that so poverty should not oblige him to dress in a way unbefitting his birth. The library of the Aguileras was but a small one; it consisted of a few books which had belonged to their wealthy grandfather,—it need scarcely be said that a Bible was not amongst them; but from reading, and listening to reading, the mind of Inez had received more cultivation than is usually found amongst women in Andalusia, though in England her education would have been considered very incomplete. It had been no small advantage to Inez that she had been almost entirely secluded from the frivolous society of Seville. The pride of poverty had had much to do with the maiden's seclusion; for Alcala had been unwilling that his sister should accept hospitality which he had not the means of returning. Inez had never complained of want of amusement; she had scarcely even regretted the quietness in which she was passing the spring-time of youth, her hours divided between attendance on her grandmother and other duties, and the sweet employment of making her brother happy. Inez had her little garden in the patio to tend, and the maiden delighted in flowers. It seemed to her now, as she stood in that court, leaning against a pillar, with her eyes gloomily fixed on the broken fountain, that the past had been a bright dream, which was passing from her for ever. Unless Alcala should yield to her entreaties (and then his life would be clouded over by a sense of disgrace), there seemed to Inez to be no alternative between weeping over a sepulchre or in a convent cell. In either case Alcala, the joy, the sunshine of her life, would be lost to his only sister.
Slowly, very slowly to Inez passed the minutes. Alcala had not come, and his absence was in itself a reply. But before the hour was over, Inez, who had gone back to her watch at the entrance, saw the muleteer returning. The young lady could not refrain from running forth into the street to meet the messenger, who might be the bearer of a letter. The man held out to the eager girl a fragment of paper, crumpled and dusty, which had evidently been torn from a book. A few scarcely legible words were written in pencil on the margin of the page,—"It is too late! Forgive, and pray for Alcala!"