"If I could only find one of the gallant's letters," she muttered to herself, "I could arm her father's mind against her; and then if madam tried to get me turned away, she would have her labor for her pains. What have we here? A flask of Xeres, as I live! So ho, senorita! Is this the source of your inspiration when you berate your betters? I declare it smells good; the jade is no bad judge of wine!"
As she spoke, the old woman, who had no particular aversion to the juice of the grape, hurriedly drank off the contents of the goblet, and immediately filled it up again from the flask.
"There! she'll be no wiser," said she, with a cunning leer. "And now I must hurry off. I would not have the young baggage find me here for a month's wages!"
Margarita effected her retreat just in time. Magdalena returned, after having, as she supposed, seen her poor father for the last time.
Had not despair completely overmastered the reason of the poor girl, she would have shrunk from the idea of committing suicide. But misery had completely, though temporarily, wrecked her intellect. She felt no horror, no remorse at the deed she was about to commit. With a steady hand she raised the goblet to her lips, and then drank the fatal draught, as she supposed it, to the last dregs.
"I must sleep now," she said, with a deep sigh. "I shall never wake again." And throwing herself, dressed as she was, upon her couch, she soon fell into a deep slumber.
How long her senses were steeped in oblivion, she could not tell. But she was awakened by shrill screams, and started to her feet in terror.
"Where am I?" she exclaimed. "Are those the cries of the condemned? Am I indeed in another world?"
"But louder and louder came the shrieks, and now she recognized the tones as those of the old duenna. Deeply as the woman had wronged her, Magdalena's feminine nature could not be insensible to her distress. She sprang down the stairway, and now stood by the bedside of the duenna, over which Juanita was already bending.
"What is the matter?" she exclaimed.