"It is the hope I can never grasp. Ask me anything but that—anything but the cowardice of flight. If the people who have trusted and followed me are in this plight, can I leave them? Would you wish your secret heart to be ever whispering to you, 'Sarita was true to her love, but false to her courage, a traitor to her honour, a deserter of her friends in trouble'? Is that your ideal of the woman who would be worthy of your love? Would you do it were my case yours, and you had led these people into the slough of ruin? Would your ears be deaf to their cries from behind the prison bars—wives calling for their husbands, husbands for their wives, children for their parents—aye, and widows mourning for their dead?"
"This is not your work, Sarita; it is Quesada's doing."
"And should they say—ah, dearest, how it pains me now to say it!—'Sarita ruined us, and then fled—for what?—to marry the man who ruined all by thwarting the one means that could alone have saved everything; by saving the usurper whose tyrant agents have wrought this havoc'? Can you save me from that!"
"It is not you, but Quesada," I cried again. "I tell you, as I have told you again and again, all this was planned and in readiness. Do you think that this raid on Daroca, with all the special knowledge shown in it of the Carlist plans there, with all the wide and detailed arrangements for police and military movements, with its swift and dramatic action, was the work of a moment? And not in Daroca only, but in every centre where you were strong. In Saragossa, Alicante, right up the seaboard even to Barcelona, and inland to every spot where you were in strength, Sarita, listen to reason. You were but as a child in his strong, ruthless hands. It was his scheme to use you Carlists to get the King removed from his path, and then crush the life out of your whole Carlist movement, even as he is doing at this hour, that there might be none to stand between him and the power at which his ambition aimed. The plans were laid weeks and probably months ahead. His spies and agents have been everywhere, even in your midst, working, prying, scheming, and so getting together the information that has made this day's work possible."
"Then, if I have been the dupe, I must suffer the dupe's fate. I cannot fly. No, no, Ferdinand," she cried with reviving energy. "Let us face the full truth. Our love must be strong enough to bear the strain of truth. Between us there stand two bars: my duty to my friends, and—I must say it, dearest—your act in rescuing the young King. Even if it be true that Quesada has aimed all through at our destruction, how can that make your act less a betrayal of us Carlists? He was in our power, you took him from us; what question of Quesada's treachery can alter that fact, or wipe it away? Nothing. Nothing can alter it. Nothing could make me leave my people to be happy with you, with that fact between us. In truth, I am almost distracted when I think of it."
"Will not your love lead you to pardon me and forget it?"
"The woman in me throbs with desire to do so, but—I am a Carlist, too, dearest; and the Carlist in me can neither pardon nor forget. You break my heart by this pleading. Will you believe I can never alter, and speak no more of it? I do love you; the Holy Virgin knows that in my woman's heart there is no room for thought of another man but you. Dearest, ever to be dearest to me, you believe this?" and she again put her arms about me, and lifted her face to mine.
"I know it, Sarita," I answered, infinitely moved.
"Then you will know something of what I suffer in parting from you. Life would be so welcome, such sunshine, such glorious happiness for me by your side, that the shadows of the thought that it can never be chill and gloom and almost frighten me with their desolateness. But our love can never be more than a memory, my dearest; to be cherished as the one lovely thing of my life, the one consolation in my pain; but no more. You must leave me, and at once. There must be danger for you here, whatever happens. Whether my friends or my enemies come, there must be danger for you. Let me be able to think that at least to you I have not brought ruin. Go back to Madrid; you will be safe there, for you are great enough now, as an English peer, to be free from danger; and even if they try to arrest you, you have the Court to help you; the young King and the Queen. My ambition, my care, my patriotism, have been so fatal to those who have trusted me; let not my love be equally fatal. Leave me that one solace. Go, Ferdinand; go and leave me. I beg of you, I implore you by the love you have for me."
"You must not ask that, Sarita."