In her left hand she carried a small lamp, which was the only light in the large apartment.
It seemed that she had not distinguished the words of old Sanchez, when he shouted to arouse her from her slumbers; for, as the Partisan advanced, who had stood hitherto in the back-ground, and had been concealed by the darkness which pervaded the whole room. Marguerita sprang eagerly forward to greet him.
"You! you!" she cried, fervently; "do my eyes tell me truly? Is it, indeed, you? Lord of my life! friend of my soul! preserver of my honour! is it, indeed, you, Pedro el Salvador. Oh, I am happy—oh, very, very happy."
And, as she spoke, in the intensity of her passionate feeling, she clasped her snowy arms about the rough soldier's neck, and letting fall her Madonna-like head on his iron shoulders, burst into a flood of tears.
"Nay, nay!" exclaimed the gallant rover, gently disengaging himself from the innocent girl's embrace; "nay, nay! weep not, sweet Senorita, this is no time for tears, for I have come to ask a favour—a favour as great as the lives of us all."
"Ask for my life, rather," she answered, emphatically, suffering the tears to trickle down her cheeks unheeded, "for it is yours; ask for my soul, you should have it, were it mine to bestow."
"Impossible, indeed, Marguerita," replied the Partisan; "impossible, indeed, that either I should ask, or you grant, were it to save a world. But, listen to me, and first look upon this beautiful young woman."
"Add one word more, Don Pedro; say that she is your wife," said the girl in a singular tone of half-resentful vehemence, which Pierre did not then comprehend.
"She is the wife of my friend, Lieutenant Gordon, lady," he replied; "no volunteer, I assure you, but one of May's dragoons."
"Pardon me," she said, turning to Julia, "pardon me, dear lady; but at times I am half distraught, and my mind wanders, I know not how or whither, since—since that day—but he has told you, doubtless. In one word, you are welcome. You are safe as if you were within the temple of your God. You are alone, you are in danger, he loves you, and I doubt not you love him; and I, Marguerita de Alava, swears it, by all the saints of Heaven, that I will die before one hair of your head, one nail of your finger, be injured. But this," she continued, after a moment's pause, "this is poor hospitality. Without there! Sanchez, Estefania, bring lights, and wine, and pile up the fire; the nights are chilly here among our forests."