Don Gome had loved his wife as Diego Lainez did his, for she had been equally worthy of being loved. Whilst he enjoyed her affection and caresses, ambition had never come to disturb his happiness, and he cared but little for the Court, at which he was scarcely ever seen. However, from the time he fixed his residence in Leon, whether it was that the death of his dear companion had left a void in his soul, which had to be filled up in some way, or whether it was that the glitter of a Court life had deteriorated and darkened his heart, formerly free from evil passions, it is certain that he became entirely changed. Envy overmastered him, as a consequence of a boundless ambition for honours and riches, which indeed he had no need of, for the count was of very noble origin, and his family one of the richest of Castile. He certainly loved his daughter, and was loved by her; it is also certain that Ximena had united in herself sufficient beauty, discretion, and other good qualities to make her the pride and glory of her father; all this, however, was not sufficient for Don Gome, and his daughter filled but a small portion of the void left in his heart by the death of his wife. There are in men certain physiological phenomena which do not admit of satisfactory explanation; in the case of the Count of Gormaz these were very numerous.
Let us leave, however, this digression, and see what was taking place in the palace of the count. In one of the apartments, which overlooked the square of the Alcazar, was the sweet, the beautiful, the loving Ximena, reclining on a couch, and drying up with her handkerchief the abundant tears which flowed from her eyes. She was thinking deeply, and her meditations must have been tortures to her soul, to judge from the agony which could easily be seen on her countenance. Not far from her, Lambra was occupied, much less with the work which lay upon her lap, than with drying up the tears which the grief of her mistress caused her to shed.
The honoured dueña deserves that we should say a few words about her, for the part which a dueña performed with regard to a young girl was not an insignificant one, especially when the maiden is in love and has lost her mother. Lambra was one of those women whose case would almost give one a right to speak strongly against nature, if nature were not the work of God—of God who has a heaven, with which to compensate people for the privations which they have to bear on earth. She was one of those women to whom nature had given a superabundance of love and, at the same time, had denied them the privilege of lavishing it on men, for, as far as she was concerned, her countenance was cast in such a mould that the more she might desire to approach men, the more would they fly from her. Women of this kind devote their love to the first being that crosses their path, for if they did not do so their hearts would burst with the affection which fills them. In this condition was Lambra: Ximena was the being who had crossed her path and on whom she had poured out all the love of her heart; she was present at her birth, and had witnessed her physical and moral development from day to day without ever losing sight of her, thus filling up her soul with her, if we may so express ourselves; and it may be said indeed that the maiden formed part of her being. Thus it was that she wept or smiled when Ximena wept or smiled, and almost hated or loved according as Ximena did the one or the other.
"Do not weep, my darling," she said to the young girl, affecting a calmness which she did not feel; "do not think any more of your unfortunate love affairs, for if you keep brooding over them you will be in your grave before three days are past, and that would be neither good nor Christian on your part. Let God, who created us, kill us, and let us not kill ourselves."
"But of what use is life to me?" replied Ximena, rousing herself from her meditations.
"Ave Maria! what a mad question! For what do we preserve our lives but to be happy?"
"Alas, Lambra, you cannot understand that my happiness is now impossible in this world. How can I be happy without Rodrigo?"
"Have you then lost him?"
"I have lost him, Lambra. If I feared that I had lost his love, when no really serious matter justified the hostility between my father and his, how much stronger are now my reasons for fearing it, when my father, the Count of Gormaz, has imprinted on the face of his father a stain which only can be washed off with blood? The hand of my father has opened an abyss between both our houses."