"I have no will but your caprices," he added, with an air of resignation.
He sat down at a mahogany desk and wrote; Concha, leaning smilingly over his chair, read over his shoulder. So soon as Don Valentine had concluded, he turned to his beloved daughter.
"Well, are you satisfied, little Mrs. Bluebeard?" he asked her.
"Oh, my kind father," she replied, taking his head in both her hands, and kissing him on the forehead. Then, with a movement full of loving grace, she took the pen from her father's fingers, and was writing a few lines at the foot of the letter, when a great noise, mingled with shrieks, was heard outside.
"O Heavens!" she exclaimed, as if struck to the heart, and turning deadly pale.
She rushed to the steps, and perceived Patito and Pedrito, carrying a man wrapped up in a cloak; other persons were collected round Doña Salazar, who seemed on the point of fainting.
"Whose is that body?" Doña Concha asked in a sharp, imperative voice.
"It is my son's!" the heart-broken mother cried.
"Don Blas Salazar," Pedrito answered.
"And Don Sylvio?" the maiden continued,