The young girl started, and, holding up her beautiful face, paled with grief:
"Do you speak, mother?" she answered.
"Yes, my girl," replied the marchioness; "you were thinking, no doubt, of our unhappy situation?"
"Alas!" exclaimed she.
"A situation," continued the marchioness, "that every moment renders more dreadful; for, do not deceive yourself, my child, this liberty that the bandit accords us, whose prisoners we are—this liberty is but a snare."
"Oh! Do you think so, mother? What makes you suppose that?"
"I know nothing; and yet I am convinced that the man who says he is sent by your father to take us back to him, and who obstinately keeps out of the way, instead of presenting himself to us as he ought to do—I am convinced that this man is our enemy, more to be feared, perhaps, than he from whom he takes us away, and who—a bandit without faith or law—has only kept us in the hope of a rich ransom, entertaining towards us neither hatred nor anger."
"Pardon me, mother, for not being of your opinion in this matter. In a country so far from our own—where, except Don Emile, we know no one—strangers in the midst of the people who surround us—what enemy can we have to fear?"
The marchioness smiled sadly.
"Your memory is short," she said, "my dear Eva; careless, like all children of your age, the past is nothing more to you than a dream, and without dwelling on the present, you look only to the future. Have you, then, forgotten the partisan chief who, two months ago, made us his prisoners, and from whom Don Emile's devotion saved us?"