"I went then to Donna Antonia," continued Inez, while Teresa bent eagerly forward to listen, for the duenna's chief hopes for Alcala lay in that quarter; "Antonia mocked my misery, rejected my prayer, though I asked for her aid on my knees!"
"On your knees!" echoed Teresa in the shrillest of tones; "an Aguilera kneel to a daughter of the upstart, money-making, time-serving, poor-grinding Lopez de Rivadeo! Donna Inez! Donna Inez! how could you have stooped so low?"
"I forgot that I was an Aguilera—I only felt that I was a woman," said Inez. "O Teresa, what has a broken-hearted girl like me to do with pride? May it not be our pride that has drawn Heaven's displeasure upon us? Nay, you must hear me, Teresa. Alcala has shown to me in his Book the words of our heavenly Master, 'Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly.' If He spake thus, He who is Lord of heaven and earth, shall we, poor children of dust, be proud of title or birth? Is not such pride a grievous sin in His sight?"
"Do you quote to me out of the Protestant's book?" said Teresa bitterly.
"It is God's book," returned Inez; "I have felt certain of that since its blessed words have sounded in my heart as they have sounded to-day! These words have been my comfort, my strength, my support under trials which, without them, would have utterly crushed me. And now it is one who is guided by that book who stands by us when every other mortal deserts us. Don Lucius has promised to do all in his power to aid us; he will try his utmost to track out the man who has robbed us."
"Robbed us!" repeated Teresa, her intense curiosity getting the better of every other feeling; "you have spoken before of Chico's stealing property, but you have never fully explained what that property was."
"The treasure which my grandfather had buried under the orange-trees yonder,—a treasure accidentally discovered by me," answered Inez.
An expression of eager hope and pleasure flashed across the face of Teresa. "The golden goblet?" she hurriedly asked.
"That, and money, and my grandmother's jewels besides."
Teresa clasped her hands, and uttered a cry of delight.