“Bueno! There I stood”––pointing to the corner of the room as he spoke––“drenched with rain, and there stood my tall and lovely wife!
“The saloon was brilliantly lighted; a profusion of plants and flowers were clustered here, there, and every where, on cabinets and tables, in striking contrast to the display exhibited yonder in that 113 armory, where pikes, muskets, and knives were gleaming through the open door.
“Quick as the lightning which was piercing deep into the inmost crevices of the rocks and lighting up the crag without, Lucia’s dark eyes flashed around the apartment from floor to ceiling, from flower to blade, resting an instant on the frame of miniatures there––hers was not among the collection then; it is the one in the middle, doctor––”
There were no knives on the table, or else, from the deadly look the doctor gave, he might have perhaps sprinkled the narrator’s heart’s blood on the floor.
“––Until at last her gaze of terror rested on me! No one, I fancy, can tell the power of Spanish girls, who has never seen them when the whole passion of their souls, either in love or hate, comes pouring in a black blaze of jet from their gleaming eyes.
“Advancing a step toward me, with her white hands clasped together, she said, in a hurried, beseeching voice––and low as was the sound, I heard it distinctly during the crashing thunder which shook the rocks of the crag to their foundations––
“‘Señor! where am I? My father! Who––who––in the name of the Blessed Virgin, art thou?’
“Again giving a look of the utmost horror around the room, she pressed her hands to her eyes, and said, in the same low, distinct tone,
“‘Speak, señor! For the love of our holy Savior, speak!’
“I felt that the girl had saved me, by her own instinctive perception, a world of painful explanations, and I replied,