“My own father!”
I turned round; our eyes met; it was just at the very entrance of the dinner-room, where a blaze of light was shed on everything, and there upon my arm—her hand trembling, her cheek colorless, and her eyes swimming in tears—was Donna Maria! Neither of us spoke, neither of us could speak!—and while her eyes wandered from my face to the several decorations I wore upon my breast, and I watched with agonizing intensity the look of terror she threw down the table towards the place where her uncle was seated, I saw plainly that some painful mystery was struggling within her mind.
“Do not let my uncle recognize you,” said she, in a low whisper; “he is not likely to do so, for both his sight and hearing are much impaired.”
“But why should I not claim him as an old acquaintance, if not a friend, Señhora, if he be the same Fra Miguel?”
“Hush! be cautious,” cried she; “I will tell you all tomorrow,—to-night, if there be a fitting opportunity. Let us talk of something else, or we shall be remarked.”
I tried my best to obey her, but I fear my attempt was a poor one; I was able, however, to listen to her with a certain amount of composure, and, while doing so, to remark how much she had improved in grace and beauty since we met. Years had developed the charms which girlhood then but shadowed forth, and in the full and liquid softness of her dark and long-lashed eyes, and the playful delicacy of her mouth, I saw how a consciousness of fascination had served to lend new powers of pleasing.
She spoke to me of her widowhood without any affectation of feeling grieved or sorry. So long as Don Geloso had lived, her existence had been like that of a nun in a cloister; he was too jealous to suffer her to go into the world, and, save at the Court Chapel each morning and evening, she never saw anything of that brilliant society in which her equals were moving. When her uncle was created Bishop of Seville, she removed to that city to visit him, and had never seen her husband after. Such, in few words, was the story of a life, whose monotony would have broken the spirit of any nature less buoyant and elastic than her own. Don Estaban was dead; and of him she spoke with deep and affectionate feeling; betraying besides that her own lot was rendered almost a friendless one by the bereavement.
That same evening, as we walked through the rooms, examining pictures and ancient armor, of which our host was somewhat vain, I learned the secret to which the Senhora had alluded at table, and divesting which of all the embarrassment the revelation occasioned herself, was briefly this: The Fra, who had never, for some reasons of his own, either liked or trusted me, happened to discover some circumstances of my earlier adventures in Texas, and even traced me in my rambles to the night of my duel with the Ranchero. Hence he drew the somewhat rash and ungenerous conclusion that my character was not so unimpeachable as I affected, and that my veracity was actually open to question! An active correspondence had taken place between Don Geloso and himself about me, in which the former, after great researches, pronounced that no noble family of my name had existed in Old Spain, and that, in plain fact, I was nothing better than an impostor! In this terrible delusion the old gentleman died; but so fearful was he of the bare possibility of injuring one in whose veins flowed the pure blood of Castile that on his death-bed he besought the Bishop to ascertain the fact to a certainty, and not to desist in the investigation till he had traced me to my birth, parentage, and country. Upon this condition he had bequeathed all his fortune to the Church, and not alone all his own wealth, but all Donna Maria's also.
The Bishop's visit to Ireland, therefore, had no other object than to look for my baptismal certificate,—an investigation, I need scarcely say, somewhat difficult and intricate!
Of course, in this confession, the fair Contessa never hesitated to regard me as an injured and calumniated individual; but so assured was she of the Bishop's desire to endow the Church with her wealth that he would have less brooked to discover me a noble of title and rank indisputable, than to find me a poor and ignoble adventurer. “Were he but to recognize you,” said she, “I should be condemned to a nunnery for life!” and this terror, however little startling to my ears, had too much of significance to her mind to be undervalued.