It seemed to him as if his hand were grasped by the claw of a demon, so hard, dry and hot were those fingers as they clutched his; and as he stooped that she might whisper in his ear, the hot breath that passed over his cheek made him shudder. She led him out back of the Fonde amid broken timbers, loose rocks and rubbish of every description: she scrambled on, dragging him after her, till they stood by a wooden door opening, as it seemed, into the embankment behind the Fonde.
Papita pushed at this door, and it gave way, revealing the mouth of a subterranean passage choked up with darkness.
“Come quickly, or some one may be on the watch,” whispered the Sibyl, for Lord Clare had hesitated at this forbidding entrance.
He was a brave man, but at this instant many stories of gipsy vengeance flashed through his mind, and his companion was not one to reconcile these doubts. There was something too impish and unearthly in her for that.
“Do you fear? the Busne is brave,” said the Sibyl scornfully—for even interest could not always keep down her malice—“like a gipsy baby, afraid of the dark!”
“Peace, woman. It is not fear; but I go into this place only when I am certain what it contains, and where it ends,” replied the earl, firmly.
“It contains Aurora, and it ends in the palace of the Alhambra,” answered the Sibyl, promptly. “It was through this passage that the last Moorish king, Boabdil, left the Alhambra forever. You stand upon the very earth where he came forth to the day which he had learned to curse.”
A deeper gloom fell upon Lord Clare. He looked upward. The black, rugged towers of the Alhambra loomed between him and the sky. Clouds hung low upon them, and the dim trees were thick and pall like, blacking the night below him.
The unfortunate Moorish king seemed near by. Never, perhaps, had history pressed so close upon a human heart. Lord Clare for a moment forgot his own position, the Sibyl, Aurora, everything in his intense realization of the past.
“In, in,” exclaimed the Sibyl. “I see a man creeping round yon corner of the Fonde; we have no time. If you fear, stay behind: the men of our people know how to avenge themselves in the day time as well as in the dark.”