“Castell? Was he your companion, the man with a hurt arm who looked like a Jew? I do not know where he is. In another part of the city, perhaps. I think that he was sent to his friends. Question me not of such matters, who am but your sick-nurse. You have been very ill, Señor. Look!” And she handed him a little mirror made of polished silver, then, seeing that he was too weak to take it, held it before him.
Peter saw his face, and groaned, for, except the red scar upon his cheek, it was ivory white and wasted to nothing.
“I am glad Margaret did not see me like this,” he said, with an attempt at a smile, “bearded too, and what a beard! Lady, how could you have nursed one so hideous?”
“I have not found you hideous,” she answered softly; “besides, that is my trade. But you must not talk, you must rest. Drink this, and rest,” and she gave him soup in a silver bowl, which he swallowed readily enough, and went to sleep again.
Some days afterwards, when Peter was well on the road to convalescence, his beautiful nurse came and sat by him, a look of pity in her tender, Eastern eyes.
“What is it now, Inez?” he asked, noting her changed face.
“Señor Pedro, you spoke to me a while ago, when you woke up from your long sleep, of a certain Margaret, did you not? Well, I have been inquiring of this Dona Margaret, and have no good news to tell of her.”
Peter set his teeth, and said:
“Go on, tell me the worst.”
“This Margaret was travelling with the Marquis of Morella, was she not?”