"No, in very truth I cannot."
"Then who in the name of Satan can extricate me?" cried Gomez Arias, in despair.
"I can!" answered a deep and determined voice.
Gomez Arias started, turned round, and with amazement beheld the mysterious stranger standing, with folded arms, looking calmly upon him.
"And who art thou?" demanded Don Lope, "that presumest thus to intrude upon my privacy?"
"Good Heavens! who should it be?" said Roque, not allowing time to the stranger to give an answer; "why, my honored master, you piously invoked Satan, and his diabolical majesty sends you forthwith one of his emissaries."
"Stranger!" proceeded Gomez Arias, not heeding his valet, "what is thy name?"
"To know that were superfluous," coldly answered the Moor, "and in nowise necessary towards the acceptation of my services."
"And what assistance canst thou afford me? I know thee not—and yet those features should not be entirely strangers to my eyes."
"It is possible that they are not," replied the stranger, unmoved, "nor is your countenance altogether unknown to me."