'Escaped from death, from shame, and from the terrible Rasalkol!' cried Aliande, pressing the old woman's hand to her lips with filial love. 'Saved by the noblest, bravest and handsomest youths....'
'Silence, children!' said the sorceress, interrupting them. 'My true mirror has already told me all, and more perhaps than you will be willing to confess.'
Blushing and confused, the maidens cast their sparkling eyes upon the ground.
'Quickly, ah too quickly, has love for your deliverers found its way to your young hearts. Faithfully until now have I guarded you against this dangerous passion; but the moment in which the traitor Rasalkol succeeded in abducting you from this protecting cavern, my power over you ceased. The reprobate's hellish plan of destroying both you and me has indeed failed; but you may yet one day wish that you had bled under his dagger;--for the sorrows of unrequited love cut more keenly into weak woman's heart than a thousand daggers.'
'You do not know our knights,' interposed Aliande in a scarcely audible murmur.
'I know them to be men. As the wolf resembles the hyena, and both of these the jackal, so also do the whole profligate sex resemble each other,--differing only in their outward appearance and capacity for seizing their prey. The inexperienced eyes of the harmless doe are easily fascinated by the beautiful stripes of the blood-thirsty tiger!'
Tears trickled down the maidens' cheeks, at this reproof.
'I love you my children,' continued Hiorba in a tenderer tone. 'You are the grand-children of my good niece, whom I buried on my hundredth birth day. Willingly would I have rendered you happy, which you can only be in an unmarried state; but you are in love, and all my warnings are spoken to the winds. For once, however, yield to a mother's anxiety: Let me prove the men of your choice.'
'Has not their battle with Rasalkol and his Moors already proved them sufficiently?' asked Aliande.
'Their knightly courage,--but not their hearts.'