"You will soon be dead by my hands!" cried the squire, rushing at the page and furiously seizing him by the throat. "What is that you dare to say, ill-born lout? You in love with Beatrice! you dare to place your eyes where I have fixed mine!"
"Fernan, Fernan, let me loose! you are choking me with your hands of iron! If I had known that you were in love with her, I should have had no more thought of loving her than of turning Moor."
Fernan let go the page, feeling convinced that he had set his eyes on Beatrice, not knowing that doing so would offend him.
"Yes, I love her," said the squire; "and, except my master, no one has any right to interfere with me, for my lance made the fellows that were carrying her off bite the dust. Although up to the present she has showed herself insensible to my prayers, she shall learn how worthy I am of serving her, and will yield to me, so that I may requite myself for the cruelty of Mayorica."
The page found it hard to give up the conquest of the maiden who had been rescued from Don Suero, but he found the hands of Fernan harder; for that reason he promised him solemnly that he would not expose himself again to his anger by paying attentions to Beatrice. The thrice enamoured squire was satisfied with this, and both continued to converse amiably, when they heard some persons exclaim in an adjacent room—
"Father!"
"Daughter of my soul!"
To these exclamations followed sobs and repeated kisses.
The page and the squire proceeded thither, and found Beatrice in the arms of a peasant, advanced in years.
It was the father of the maiden, who had been informed that she was in the castle of Vivar, and who had not come sooner to clasp her in his arms for the reason which his own words will explain.