“You’ll come back? He will be here at nine. You will come back—promise it, swear it!”
“I promise by this kiss.”
“Then take two to make sure,” prattles Miss Hermoine with happy eyes.
A moment after his escort being ready, pursued by kisses thrown from fairy hands, the Duke mounts charger and canters off from the villa of his daughter, [[244]]whose eyes are streaming with happy tears and whose lips are murmuring: “Father and future husband both together. To-night will be a happy one for me!”
Alva rides on to Lillo, and having word with Mondragon, the commandant, charges him to send courier at once with a note he writes to Sancho d’Avila, commandant of the Citadel at Antwerp. Then with a father’s natural instinct of curiosity in regard to coming son-in-law, Don Fernando, chatting with the officer in command, one of his favorites, says: “Mondragon, do you know a certain Guido Amati, Colonel in Romero’s Legion?”
“Of course, your excellency, he was under me before he went to Holland.”
“Ah! Tell me of him.”
“That’s little good, except that he was the bravest of the brave, and as fine a swordsman as ever handled Toledo blade; but a more undisciplined, gambling, rake and debauchee I never met, and I’m an old campaigner.”
“A debauchee undisciplined, a roué drunkard,” gasps His Highness, his face growing even more pallid than is usual to his sallow cheeks. “You are sure you know what you say, Mondragon?”
“Certainly, I knew him well. But what matters it? Guido Amati is dead.”