"What am I to understand by all this, senor?" asked the girl, with increasing agitation.
"Does not your own heart tell you?" asked Pedro, embracing her.
"O madre de Dios—what is all this I hear?" she exclaimed, while flushing and palpitating in his arms, and glancing nervously at the door.
"Demonio—I forget what I am about!" muttered Pedro, as he hastened to the door, and softly turned the key.
"Leave me—retire as you came. Leave me, if you hope for pardon—if you would not wish to see me die at your feet, Don Pedro," said Ignez, gathering her energies, and gazing at him with a glance which was very loving and imploring, though there was something in Pedro's aspect now, flushed as he was with wine and presumptuous hopes, that almost terrified her; for his features seemed unusually coarse and swollen, and his eyes wore a very wild expression. "Leave me," she repeated, "or I shall be compelled to cry for aid; my father's room is not very far from this."
Pedro laughed.
"Senora," said he, "you forget that your reputation is at stake if you utter an outcry, and I am thus discovered—so kiss me, and be quiet, will you? Were it known that a man was in your bed-room, even for ten minutes, all Santiago would ring with it to-morrow; and think of the fuss there would be about it on the Alameda. How the Padre Eizagiuerro would raise his eyebrows, and the Padre Ugarte his voice; how Donna Erminia would shrug her white shoulders; and what would old papa Salvador de Moreno say of it? So, my little beauty, my darling Ignez, be quiet pray, for all our sakes. Come, mi queredita, sit on my knee, and I shall soon teach you to love me with all your heart."
But Pedro's words—the very picture of shame and exposure which his banter unwittingly portrayed—instead of answering his purpose, fully recalled the young lady to herself, and a sense of her danger.
The regard she bore him in her impulsive breast first filled her eyes with tears of sorrow, that he should dare to act thus, and then they flashed with indignation that Pedro should conceive a scheme so disastrous.
"If you love me, as you say, Don Pedro, I beseech you to retire," she said, sternly.