“Heaven forbid that my sweet Gitanilla should ever inherit the fierce nature of her grandame, or my chances of happiness were small, indeed,” said the Englishman, inly. Then addressing the Sibyl, he added, almost solemnly, “no man should promise for himself in the future. I am powerless to answer for my conduct to your grandchild beyond the present feelings of my heart, the immediate promptings of my conscience. It seems to me now impossible that I should ever wrong the trust you both place in me—impossible that any other should ever step between her heart and mine. God only knows what is in the future,” he continued, with mournful sadness, “or how the past may break in and color it.”
He seemed about sinking into a reverie, one of those to which he had been accustomed, and which gave a serious cast to a character naturally ardent and impulsive. But the old gipsy grew impatient, and broke in with something of her native asperity, which had been kept in abeyance during the entire conversation.
“It is getting late—have you decided, Busne?” she said, without once removing her eyes, which had been reading him to the soul. Doubts, struggles, hesitations, all that went to make up the flood of contending feelings that raged beneath his calm, almost sad exterior, she had been keenly regarding.
“I have decided,” answered the young man, in a firm, but very sad voice, “God knows I would have saved her otherwise, if possible! When and where must this ceremony take place? Not in presence of the tribe; that I cannot submit to.”
The gipsy uttered one of her sharp, bitter laughs.
“They would kill her and you. No, no, they will think her dead. Before dawn we went out together; I shall go home alone—they will understand. It is not the first time that old Papita has done that, and always after, those who sought, have found traces of her work—I shall leave them now. Fragments of Aurora’s dress are clinging to the brambles where the Darro runs deepest. They will find footsteps also ground into the soil, and tangles of black hair. They know Aurora’s hair by the purple gloss.”
“But she, Aurora, tell me what you have done with her?” inquired the young man, half terrified by these details.
“She is safe. When the night comes, be ready, and I will take you where she is.”
“At what hour?”
“Close to midnight, when you see the fires go out along the Barranco, expect me.”