I took her hands and pressed them.
"I am very troubled for you," I murmured.
She returned the pressure, her own hands trembling very much.
"If it had not been for Sarita Castelar, you two would never have quarrelled, and—and all would have been so different." Her lips quivered as she spoke, and her eyes were full of sadness. Her look pained me inexpressibly. I said nothing, and after a pause she added:
"You do not think he will let you take her from him? You know him too well for that; although you do not know him yet. What was it he would not let me hear?"
"I would rather you heard it from him. And I must go." She had roused my fears for Sarita.
"I thought he meditated some act of violence against you, and he is headstrong enough to do anything—even against her."
"You can surely prevent that," I cried, quickly, in alarm. "You were strong to save me."
The look with which she answered me lives in my memory to this hour. Then she drew her hands from mine, and said coldly—
"I can do nothing. You have made him desperate." And with a change of tone, after a slight pause, as though excusing her own hardness of thought and resolve, she added: "Besides, I do not know where she is; so I can do nothing, even if I would."