“Our laws are older than those of Spain,” answered the Gitanilla, with a certain degree of pride in her tone, as if she gloried in the antiquity of the very custom that was to crush her. “Our laws are older and better kept than those of the Busne; traditions do not run so far back as their origin. They are fixed and unchangeable—he who breaks them dies!”
“But what have you done, innocent child, that these laws, however strengthened by antiquity, should fall on you?”
“I love you, a Busne—one of the race we hold accursed—our enemies—our oppressors. I am alone with you, and have been for hours, here in these vast ruins. But that is nothing; that they approve so long as it brings gold; but I love you! I have said it in words, in my looks, every way in which love can speak when it burdens the heart with its sweet joy. She, my weird grandame, has seen this. Did I not feel that she was close by in the ambassador’s hall?”
“But they dare not kill you for that—for the innocent affection which you could not help—affection that has dreamed of no wrong.”
“She has seen us here, sitting together; she has heard me, heard you. They will believe me an outcast of the tribe, and kill me as they would a viper!”
The young man arose, walked out into the court, and began to pace up and down the glittering pavement, hurriedly, as one seeks rapid motion when some great mental or moral struggle is going on in the mind. Gradually his steps became more rapid; his brow flushed, and with an impetuous movement of one hand, as if thus dashing aside all further consideration of a harassing subject, he sought the Gitanilla again.
“Aurora,” he said, in a hurried manner, “you shall never go back into that nest of fiends—look up, child—you are mine now. They shall not touch a hair of your head, or even look upon your face again! Come, what have you to fear? I am powerful—I am rich, and I love you. I struggle against it no longer—it is a duty now, I love you! Go with me to my own country—I cannot give you this sky or these fairy ruins, but you shall be surrounded with beautiful things nevertheless. You shall study, learn; forget that miserable ravine burrowed with human fox-holes, and swarming with murderers. Come, Aurora, look up, I long to see that cold, dead color swept away. Smile, smile my bird, we will not part again.”
When a nation has but one virtue, how powerful that one must be. There is much good in every human heart that God has created, and when all that good pours itself into a single channel, it has a power and vitality which men of more diffuse cultivation little dream of.
Aurora knew nothing of her lover’s rank, of his wealth, or the thousand barriers that lay between his condition and hers. She was aware that sometimes, when a Gitano becomes wealthy—a rare case—he had been known to wed a Busne wife, but that such unions invariably made the Gitano an object of suspicion and dislike to his own people. If this privilege were permitted to the men, it might be—she could not tell, no case had ever come beneath her observation—extended to the females also. But then a betrothed female like herself—the promised wife of a count—how was this to be hoped? All these thoughts, full of doubt and trouble, came upon my poor mother while the Englishman stood impatiently—for his restrained manner had entirely disappeared—waiting her reply.
“They would not let me go—I am betrothed. No one of our females have ever married with the Busne,” she said, at last, in a voice that betrayed the utter despondency that possessed her.