"My uncle's family may seek to divide us, and I think they will. But the lady of my heart will not heed their idle words?"
Doña Beatriz smiled. "I am a Lavella," she said. "Do you not know our motto?--'True unto death.'"
"It is a glorious motto. May it be mine too."
"Take heed what you do, Don Juan. If you love me, you will look well to your footsteps, since, wherever they lead, mine are bound to follow." Saying this, she rose, and stood gazing in his face with flushed cheek and kindling eyes.
The words were such as might thrill any lover's heart with joy and gratitude. Yet there was something in the look which accompanied them that changed joy and gratitude into vague fear and apprehension. The light in that dark eye seemed borrowed from the fire of some sublime but terrible resolve within. Juan's heart quailed, though he knew not why, as he said, "My queen should never tread except through flowery paths."
Doña Beatriz took up a little golden crucifiz that, attached to a rosary of coral beads, hung from her girdle. "You see this cross, Don Juan?"
"Yes, señora mia."
"On that horrible night when they dragged your brother to prison, I swore a sacred oath upon it. You esteemed me a child, Don Juan, when you read me chapters from your book, and talked freely to me about God, and faith, and the soul's salvation. Perchance I was a child in some things. For I supposed them good words; how could they be otherwise, since you spoke them? I listened and believed, after a fashion; half thinking all the time of the pretty fans and trinkets you brought me, or of the pattern of such and such an one's mantilla that I had seen at mass. But your brother tore the veil from my eyes at last, and made me understand that those specious words, with which a child played childishly, were the crime that finds no pardon here or hereafter. Of the hereafter I know not; of the here I know too much, God help me! There be fair ladies, not more deeply involved than I, who have changed their gilded saloons for the dungeons of the Triana. But then it matters not so much about me. For I am not like other girls, who have fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers to care for them. Saving Don Carlos (who was good to me for your sake), no one ever gave me more than the half-sorrowful, half-pitying kindness one might give a pet parrot from the Indies. Therefore, thinking over all things, and knowing well your reckless nature, Señor Don Juan, I swore that night upon this holy cross, that if by evil hap you were attainted for heresy, I would go next day to the Triana and accuse myself of the same crime."
Juan did not for a moment doubt that she would do it; and thus a chain, light as silk but strong as adamant, was flung around him.
"Doña Beatriz, for my sake--" he began to plead.