"The third is a young man with a handsome face, soft voice, and noble manners, more terrible than both the others, it is said, though he has no official title: he seems to hold great power and passes for a secret agent of Juárez."
"His name?"
"Don Diego Izaguirre."
The adventurer's face brightened.
"Good," he said with a smile, "the affair is not so desperate as I feared; we shall succeed."
"Do you think so?"
"I am sure of it."
"May heaven hear you!" the two ladies exclaimed with clasped hands.
Doña María, ever since the arrival of the pretended baron, had been suffering from an extraordinary feeling, while the young man was conversing with don Jaime. She gazed at him with strange intentness, she felt her eyes fill with tears and her bosom oppressed, she could not at all understand the emotion which was caused her by the sight and voice of this elegant young man, whom she now saw for the first time; in vain did she search her recollections to discover where she had already heard his voice, whose accent had something so sweetly sympathetic about it that went straight to her heart. She studied the handsome manly face of the vaquero, as if she were to discover in his features a fugitive resemblance to someone she had formerly known: but everything was a chaos in her memory, an insurmountable barrier seemed to be raised between the present and the past, as if to prove to her that she was allowing herself to be overpowered by a wild hope, and that the man who was before her, was really a stranger to her. Don Jaime attentively followed on doña María's face the different feelings that were in turn reflected on it; but whatever his opinion on the subject might be, he remained cold, impassive, and apparently indifferent to the interludes of this family drama, which, however, must interest him to the highest degree. Loïck arrived followed by López: a fresh horse was saddled for Dominique.
"Let us go," the adventurer said as he rose, "time presses."