"The bride!" exclaimed Lisarda, "the bride! why, who should be the bride?—Have I not already told you?"
"No, indeed, you have not."
"Really," resumed Lisarda, conceitedly, "for a thoughtless silly girl, I am the most unaccountable female in Spain."
Theodora did not attempt to contradict her, as she was certainly a most unaccountable girl for a woman of forty.
"Well," proceeded Lisarda, "before it again slips from my memory, I must acquaint you that the bride is no other than our beloved and most noble mistress, the lady Doña Leonor."
"She well deserves a gentle bridegroom," observed Theodora, with affability.
"She does in troth," replied Lisarda; "and how should she not, being as she is? We have had no lack of suitors—aye, and the noblest. Good Heavens! what ado there has been about it—gallants we have had, clustering about us like bees when they flock around their queen. The bridegroom is indeed a most deserving and accomplished cavalier; and so he should, to be the favored choice of Doña Leonor. However, he is not the one I patronized, and who I hoped at one time would marry my lady—he, alas! was prevented from proceeding in so desirable an engagement, not from any fault of his or mine either, but from an unexpected event that presented the most insurmountable impediment to the marriage."
"And that was—?" inquired Theodora.
"Death!" replied Lisarda: "it being rumoured and readily believed, that the unfortunate caballero was murdered by those blood-thirsty Moors of the Alpujarras; and indeed his long disappearance from Granada makes the unwelcome intelligence to rest on no shallow foundation."
Theodora felt an involuntary chill at this part of her attendant's narration; for the similarity of fate between Leonor's lover and her own could not but be productive of a most harrowing sensation. Lisarda, however, continued, unconscious of the pang she had inflicted.