“Jesu shield us!” exclaimed Inez, with lips that would have told her terror without words. “Durst thou, then, to enter Cadiz Harbour with a single cruizer?”
“’Twas a perilous deed, certes,” answered Hildebrand, “and Heaven grant it prove not fatal! But, to the point. My bark is the outermost one in the harbour, and hath the Scottish flag (St. Andrew’s cross, red on white) flying at the stern. I would the cavalier would visit her.”
Inez hesitated a moment.
“It shall be done,” she said, at length.
“He must inquire out my lieutenant,” resumed Hildebrand. And, taking a ring from his finger, he let it drop in the hand of Inez, and continued:—“This ring will be my token to him; and when he knows how I am fast—But, down with thy cowl.”
Inez, however, taken by surprise, turned on his face a glance of bewilderment, and made no attempt to give his injunction effect. It was fortunate that Hildebrand immediately perceived her hesitation, or the gaoler, whom he heard entering, and had perceived to be alert in his vocation, would have been upon them before she had resumed her disguise. But observing that her presence of mind was completely gone, he drew down her cowl himself; and thus, by a prompt interposition, which surprise could not arrest, deprived the impending peril of half its terror.
He had hardly drawn down her cowl when the gaoler entered. A terrible degree of fear had come over Inez; and by one of those revolutions of the system which it is impossible to account for, and which are effected in a moment—as though the loose thought that they must originally spring from, having snapped under the weight and pressure of the occasion, had shaken and unbraced every faculty—by one of those strange revolutions, her excited nerves were left without restraint, and her imagination without a bridle. A dreadful infatuation fell upon her; and, with this in her mind, she was prompted to throw off her disguise, and yield herself a prisoner to the gaoler. Fortunately, however, her subjection to the morbid influence was but momentary. Recklessness of herself, though it was supreme for an instant, was quickly overtaken by affection for Hildebrand, and, with the magic presence of love, her spirit revived, and her self-possession was recovered.
The gaoler entered with a dogged look, as if he were determined, whether Hildebrand had been confessed or no, that he would allow of no longer conference.
“St. Jago be gracious!” he cried, “hath he not got his shrift yet, father?”
“I have done,” answered Inez, in a feigned voice. “Let him be looked to!”