The maiden gazed at him for a moment with an indescribable expression of amazement.
"Why, you must love me!" she at length burst forth.
"She asks that question!" the old man murmured sadly. "Will you see the Colonel?"
"One moment, oh, one moment; I want to know you, to understand you, and learn what I ought to think of you."
"Alas, I repeat to you, señorita, that I love you, love you to adoration; oh! Do not feel alarmed; that love has nothing of an insulting nature: what I love in you is an extraordinary, supernatural likeness to a woman who died, alas! On the same day that when my daughter was torn from me by the Indians. The daughter I lost, whom I shall never see again, would be your age, señorita: such is the secret of my love for you, of my repeated attempts to seize your person. Oh, let me love you, and deceive myself; in looking at you I fancy I see my poor dear child, and that error renders me so happy. Oh señorita! If you only knew what I have suffered, what I still suffer, from this miserable wound which burns my heart—oh! You would have pity on me."
While the old man spoke with an impassioned accent, his face was almost transfigured; it had assumed such an expression of tenderness and sorrow, that the maiden felt affected, and by an involuntary impulse offered him her hand.
"Poor father!" she said to him in a gentle and pitiful voice.
"Thanks for that word," he replied in a voice choking with emotion, while his face was inundated with tears; "thanks, señorita, I feel less unhappy now."
Then, after a moment's silence, he wiped away his tears.
"Do you wish him to come in?" he asked softly.