“Aha!” quoth the old woman as she watched the keen enjoyment with which I emptied the tumbler, “the señor likes that? Good! he shall have some more a little later. Now I must go and see to the making of some broth for the señor; it is his strength that we must now build up.”
And, so saying, the old nurse glided softly out of the room, leaving me to enjoy the glorious scene that was framed by the wide-open window at the foot of my bed.
I had lain thus for perhaps five minutes when the door of the room again opened, and there entered a young girl of some sixteen years of age—that was her actual age, I subsequently learned, but she looked quite two years older,—who came to the side of the bed and stood looking down upon me with large, lustrous eyes that beamed with pity and tenderness. Then, as she laid her cool, soft hand very gently upon my forehead, she said, in the softest, sweetest voice to which I have ever listened:
“Oh, Señor Grenvile, it is good to see you looking so very much better. You will recover now; but there was a time—ah, how long ago it seems, yet it was but yesterday!—when we all thought that you would never live to see the light of another day. It was Mammy, and her wonderful knowledge of medicine, that saved you. Had not the captain realised your critical state, and driven the men to incredible exertions to get the ship into harbour quickly, you could not have lived!”
“Señorita,” said I, “how can I sufficiently thank you for the kind interest you exhibit in an unfortunate prisoner—for that, I suppose, is what I am—”
“No, señor, oh no; you are quite mistaken!” interjected my companion. “At least,” she corrected herself, “you are mistaken in the character of your imprisonment. That you certainly are a prisoner, in a sense, is quite true; but I hope—that is, I—do—not think—you will find your imprisonment very intolerable.”
“All imprisonment, whatever its character, must be intolerable, it seems to me,” I grumbled. Then, checking myself, I exclaimed: “But do not let us talk about myself. Do you mind telling me who you are? Your face seems familiar to me, somehow, yet I am certain that I have never before seen you. Are you, by any chance, Captain Ricardo’s daughter?”
The girl’s face clouded somewhat as she answered: “No; oh no, I am not Captain Ricardo’s daughter! I am an orphan; I have never known what it is to have either father or mother, and I am a prisoner—like yourself, yet I do not find my state by any means intolerable. Captain Ricardo has been kindness itself to me, indeed he could not have been more kind to me had I really been his daughter.”
“Ah,” said I, “I am glad to hear it, for your sake! He seems a strange man, a very curious commingling of good and evil traits of character—kind and gentle to you—and, thus far, to me—yet relentlessly cruel and bloodthirsty in the prosecution of his accursed calling. And your name, señorita, will you not tell me that?”
“Oh, yes, certainly! Why should I not?” answered my companion. “I am called Lotta—Carlotta Josefa Candelaria Dolores de Guzman. And your name is Dick, is it not?”