"With pleasure, senor," said she, with a charming smile.
"Bueno, Dora," said her brother, taking from its peg the guitar and handing it to her; on which she threw its broad scarlet riband over her shoulder, ran her white and slender fingers through the strings, and then a lovely Spanish picture, that Phillips might have doted on, was complete.
"What shall it be, Baltasar?" she asked; adding with a swift glance at Quentin's scarlet coat, "'Mia Madre no caro soldados aqui'—eh?"
"Nay, Dora, that would scarcely be courteous to our guest, who is a soldier."
"What then, mi hermano?"
"Give us one of Lope de Vega's songs. There is that ballad which compliments the English king who came to seek a wife in Spain."
Then with great sweetness she sang Lope's verses, which begin—
"Carlos Stuardo soy,
Qui siendo amor mi guia,
Al cielo de Espana voy,
Por ver mi estrella Maria."
While she sang, Quentin thought of the old Jacobite enthusiasm of Lady Winifred and Lord Rohallion, and how they would have admired alike the song and the singer; and while his eyes were fixed on her soft pale face and thick downcast eyelashes, he neither heard the accompaniment Baltasar beat with a pair of castanets, or by the Padre Trevino with the haft of a remarkably ugly knife, which seemed alike his favourite weapon and plaything.
In a few minutes after this they had all separated for the night, and Quentin, without undressing, as he proposed to start early on the following morning, stretched on a hard pallet and muffled in his great coat, with his sabre and pistols under his head, soon sank into slumber, the sound, deep slumber induced by intense fatigue; and from this not even the horrors of the recent massacre, the louring visage of the suspicious Trevino, the voice, the eyes, of the lovely young donna, or any other memory, could disturb him.