"How cold it is!" complained the Duchess, shivering and drawing closer the richly furred velvet mantle in which she was enveloped.
"And you gave me no stockings, Cynthia, only slippers. How could you be so foolish?"
"You must not mind that, Leila, since you are safe," said Cynthia, bluntly. "Think what horrors are going on in the town. Holy prophet! it reminds me of the night when my parents fled from the Spaniards!"
"Cynthia, it is very wicked of you to use those heathenish imprecations, now that I have taken the trouble to have you baptised. Your prophet was not holy, nor a prophet at all, but a very bad man, as I have told you several times, and you must not be so benighted any more."
Cynthia's eyes flashed fire, but she held her peace.
"If you call any one holy," continued the Duchess, "it should be the blessed Virgin and holy saints. You ought to consider it a great mercy that you have been led to the service of a Christian mistress who cares for your soul. Don't you feel this?"
"No," said Cynthia, stoutly; "I do not feel grateful that I was torn from my home and country, and that my father was cut down on his own doorstep, and my mother dragged along the ground by the hair of her head. Could you feel grateful, Leila?"
"Not for those things, certainly; but misfortunes are often blessings in disguise, and the Moors are very wicked people, and—"
"They are doing those very things, just now, to your people," said Cynthia, expressively, and stretching out her arm towards the town.