"Don Estevan," Don Leo continued, "had by some means learned your daughter's intentions. In order to be thoroughly acquainted with her plans, and be able to overthrow them at the right moment, he pretended to be entirely ignorant of them; let the young girl carry the letters to the evangelista, reading the copies, and answering them himself, for the simple reason that señor Serrano did not receive your daughter's letters, because Don Estevan had bought his valet, who gave them to him with seals unbroken. This skilful perfidy would doubtless have succeeded, had not accident, or rather providence, placed me so fortunately in the evangelista's shop."
"Oh!" Don Mariano muttered, "the man was a monster."
"No," Don Leo remarked; "circumstances compelled him to go much further than he perhaps intended. Nothing proves that he meditated the death of your daughter."
"What would he then?"
"Your fortune. By forcing Doña Laura to take the veil, he gained his object. Unfortunately, as always happens when a man enters on that thorny path which fatally leads to crime, although he had coldly calculated all the chances of success, he could not foresee my intervention in the execution of his plans—an intervention which must make them fail, and compel him to commit a crime, in order to ensure success. Doña Laura, persuaded that Don Francisco's protection would not fail her, scrupulously followed the advice I sent her by means of letters I myself wrote in the name of the friend she addressed. For my own part, I held myself in readiness to act when the moment arrived. I will enter into no details on this subject. Doña Laura refused to take the vows in the church itself. The scandal was extreme, and the abbess, in her fury, resolved to put an end to matters. The hapless young lady, sent to sleep by means of a powerful narcotic, was buried alive in the in pace, where she must die of hunger."
"Oh!" the two men exclaimed, shuddering with horror.
"I repeat to you," Don Leo continued, "that I do not believe Don Estevan capable of this barbarity. He was probably the indirect accomplice, but nothing more; the abbess was the sole culprit. Don Estevan accepted accomplished facts; he profited by them, nothing more. We must suppose so, for the honour of humanity; otherwise, this man would be a monster. Warned on the same day of what had occurred in the convent, I collected a band of banditti and adventurers. Then, at nightfall, I entered the building by stratagem, and, pistol in hand, carried off your daughter."
"You!" Don Mariano exclaimed, with a movement of surprise, mingled with joy. "Oh, heavens! then she is saved—she is in safety!"
"Yes; at a place where I, aided by Marksman, concealed her."
"Don Estevan would never have found her," the hunter added, with a crafty smile.