“Convince yourself of what?” I questioned.
“Of your unworthiness, Zana.”
His voice sunk as he said this, and tears came into his eyes.
“Of my unworthiness?” I said, burning with outraged pride. “In what one thing have I been proven unworthy?”
“Are you not here?—have you not fled from your natural protectors?”
“And your mother has allowed a doubt on this question to rest on me, even with you!” I said, calmed by the very force of my indignation. “Listen; I left home because it was the only way to save my benefactors from being turned helpless upon the world by your countess mother. I left secretly, well knowing that if those good people knew the price I paid for their tranquillity, they would have begged on the highway rather than consent to my departure. I had one other friend in the world, an elderly man of my mother’s people. He is a safe and wise person, and with him I go to the tribe from whence my mother fled when the curse of your uncle’s love fell upon her.”
“But this is not the way to Spain. The man who has just left you cannot be that friend,” he answered; “how came you here with him in the hills of Scotland?”
“I came to save”——
I broke off suddenly, struck with the imprudence of informing him that my object was to rescue Cora from his power.
“To save whom? oh, speak, Zana! let me believe your object here a worthy one.”