The minor cares of the moment lent their weight to add to the pressure of greater. Inez was uneasy at the thought of Donna Benita awaking from her siesta, and being frightened at finding no one beside her. Alcala, too, must need his lemonade, and would miss his Book,—the precious volume which Inez had still in her bosom. Add to all this the physical distress, the sense of suffocation consequent on confinement in a place in which there was no circulation of air, and some idea may be formed of the misery endured by Alcala's sister.
The impatience of Inez had risen to the point of agony long before, to her intense relief, she heard in the vaulted passage the heavy step of Teresa, wearily returning from her visit to the shrine of her patron saint.
"Release me—oh, release me!" cried out Inez from her place of confinement.
Teresa was so much astonished by hearing the cry for help, muffled as it came through the closed door of the armoury, that she dropped the key of the grating, which she was just about to open.
"Make haste—or I die!" gasped poor Inez.
Teresa made what haste her infirmities and her amazement would permit; but she had to stoop and pick up the key, fit it into the hole, and then push open the grating, and every moment thus employed was a moment of torture to Inez. At length, guided by the voice of her mistress, the old servant entered the patio, and turned round where the armoury door stood close behind the grating. In another second Inez, trembling and gasping for breath, was released from her terrible prison.
"In the name of all the saints, how came you to be locked up here?" exclaimed the wondering duenna.
"Chico has robbed us—I can say no more now!" faltered Inez, scarcely able to speak. "Go quickly to Donna Benita,—she may want help,—while I—" The sentence was never ended; for Inez, exhausted and faint as she felt, was already on her way to her brother's apartment.
"Chico has robbed us!" echoed the bewildered Teresa, lifting up her hands in amazement. "Robbed the house, and shut up the lady! I know not what there was in the place that the poorest thief in Seville would think it worth his while to take!"
Glancing around her, Teresa soon perceived the disordered state of the patio; the marble round the parterre encumbered with heaps of dust and earth, and in the ground under the bushes a hole large enough for an infant's grave. Something had surely been dug out, something had been carried away. Teresa was puzzling her brain to divine what could have occurred during her absence, when she was alarmed by sounds,—but the cause of these sounds must be reserved for the ensuing chapter.