Doña Hermosa had thrown herself into her father's arms, and tearfully embraced him; without seeing the Tigercat. "My father, my father!" she cried; "God be praised that I see you once more!"
"Who speaks of God here?" said Don Pedro in a hollow voice, and shaking off his daughter, who tottered from him.
Doña Hermosa looked round in affright. Pale and trembling, she would have fallen, if Stoneheart had not hastened to support her.
"Look, how they love each other!" sneered the Tigercat. "It is touching! Don Fernando, throw your arms around your father;" and he pointed to Don Pedro.
"He my father!" cried Stoneheart, overjoyed; "Oh, it would be too much happiness!"
"Yes," said the Tigercat; "Don Pedro is your father, and here is your sister!" As he said this, he pointed to Doña Hermosa and again burst into a diabolical laugh.
The two young people were thunderstruck. Don Pedro, whose nervous system had received a violent shock from the first revelation, felt his reason deserting him. He seemed neither to see nor hear, and to take no notice of the strange scene enacting around him. The Tigercat exulted in his triumph. Don Estevan, alarmed at the hacendero's state, thought it high time to interfere. "Don Pedro," said he in a loud voice and forcibly laying his hand on the old man's shoulder, "collect yourself; this miscreant is a liar! Your children are worthy of your name. I was with them at the Voladero."
Don Pedro seemed to make a mighty effort to resume his grasp on the senses which were leaving him. His body underwent a terrible convulsion. He turned his face towards Stoneheart, and a heavy sigh burst from his heart; then tears flowed down his venerable cheeks, and he cried in feeble accents, as he fell on the breast of his son, "Yours is the truth, Estevan; the truth, the truth!"
"I swear it, Don Pedro!" was the solemn reply.
"Thanks, thanks! I knew the miscreant lied. My children—"