"Only a few minutes after Harry's death; frightened by the sounds of the fight and the fearful uproar of the earthquake, I was half mad. Still, I can remember a circumstance which will doubtless put us on the right track."
"Speak, Ellen, speak, and whatever is to be done I will do."
The girl looked at him for a moment with an indefinable expression. She bent over to him, laid her hand on his arm, and said, in a voice soft as a bird's song:
"Don Pablo, a frank and loyal explanation between us is indispensable."
"I do not understand you," the young man stammered, as he let his eyes fall.
"Yes you do," she replied, with a sad smile; "you understand me, Don Pablo; but no matter, as you pretend to be ignorant of what I wish to say to you, I will explain myself in such a way that any further misconception will be impossible."
"Speak! Ellen; though I do not suspect your meaning, I have a foreboding of misfortune."
"Yes," she continued, "you are right; a misfortune is really concealed under what I have to say to you, if you do not consent to grant me the favour I implore of you."
Don Pablo rose.
"Why feign longer? Since I cannot induce you to give up your plan, Ellen, the explanation you ask of me is needless. Do you believe," he went on, as he walked in great agitation up and down the jacal, "that I have not already regarded the strange position in which we find ourselves from every side? Fatality has impelled us toward each other by one of those accidents which human wisdom cannot foresee. I love you, Ellen, I love you with all the strength of my soul, you, the daughter of the enemy of my family, of the man whose hands are still red with my sister's blood, which he shed by assassinating her coldly, in the most infamous manner. I know that, I tremble at thinking of my love, which, in the prejudiced eyes of the world, must seem monstrous. All that you can say to me, I have said repeatedly to myself; but an irresistible force drags me on this fatal incline. Will, reason, resolution, all are broken before the hope of seeing you for a moment and exchanging a few words with you. I love you, Ellen, so as to leave for your sake, relatives, friends, family, aye, the whole universe."