"You would defend him, if necessary, I suppose, Shaw?" Nathan said to him ironically.
"Why should I not, were it required?" the young man said boldly.
"Eh!" Sutter remarked with a grin, "He is thinking of the Wood Eglantine."
This word had been scarce uttered ere Shaw, with purpled face, contracted features, and eyes injected with blood, rushed with uplifted knife on his brother, who awaited him firmly. The girl dashed between them.
"Peace, peace!" she shrieked in a piercing voice, "Do brothers dare threaten one another?"
The two young fellows remained motionless, but watching and ready to strike in a moment. Don Pablo fixed an ardent glance on the girl, who was really admirable at this moment. With her features animated by anger, her head erect, and her arms stretched out between the two men, she bore a startling likeness to those Druidesses who in olden times summoned the warriors to combat beneath the forests of Germany.
In her whole person she offered the complete type of the gentle Northern woman. Her hair light and golden like ripe corn; her eyes of extreme purity, which reflected the azure of the sky; her earnest mouth, with rosy lips and pearly teeth; her flexible and small waist; the whiteness of her complexion, whose delicate and transparent skin still bore the flush of adolescence—all was combined in this charming maiden to render her the most seductive creature imaginable.
Don Pablo, a stranger to this kind of beauty, felt himself involuntarily attracted toward the girl, and entirely subjugated by her. Forgetting the reason that had brought him to this spot, the danger he had incurred, and that which still menaced him, he was fascinated and trembling before this delicious apparition, fearing at each instant to see it vanish like a vision, and not daring to turn his glance from her while he felt he had no strength left to admire her.
This young creature, so frail and delicate, formed a strange contrast with the tall statures and marked features of her brothers, whose coarse and savage manners only served to heighten the elegance and charm exhaled by her whole person. Still this scene could not be prolonged, and must be ended at once. The maiden walked toward Don Pablo.
"Sir," she said to him with a soft smile, "You have nothing more to fear from my brothers; you can mount your horse again, and set out, and no one will oppose your departure."