"Oh horror! horror!" shrieked Theodora: "Father! father, you do not—you cannot curse your hapless child. Oh! my expiation has been boundless—the justice of Heaven itself must be satisfied, and the heart of a father cannot deny forgiveness to the poor wretch whose miseries are far—far superior to her guilt. Oh pity me!—grant me your pardon—repulse me not thus from your heart, and I will immediately speed to bury my sufferings and my shame amidst the gloom of a cloister."
She ceased, and the wildness of her manner, a fitful tremor that shook her frame, and the unearthly hue that overspread her already pallid countenance, exhibited in glowing tints the havoc that such deep anguish had made. Her trembling arms were extended, and the thin cold fingers clasped in agony; loosely her dishevelled tresses fell on her father's couch, as in the earnestness of grief she appealed to him for mercy.
Monteblanco looked on her, intensely looked on that harrowing picture of distress, and felt the burning tears that descended in copious streams from their swollen springs. The vivid signs of her repentance, and the excess of her affliction were inconsistent with depravity. Error more than guilt was there, and Don Manuel could not behold unmoved his once beloved daughter, the pride and solace of his declining years, reduced to her present state of utter wretchedness. Dreadful was the conflict which the noble and high-minded cavalier had to sustain between the stern dictates of worldly prejudice, and the tender pleadings of nature. But happily to the father's honour, nature at length prevailed. He was softened, and in an extacy of mingled grief and affection, he clasped his sorrowing child in his trembling arms.
Monteblanco appeared now partially relieved from a load of anguish. He consoled the poor forlorn culprit that pathetically clung to his protection, and his fondness for the once beautiful and accomplished Theodora, seemed to return with additional force for the unfortunate being that stood before him.
But now new feelings took possession of his breast. As he gazed with a melancholy joy on his restored child—as he considered with the smile of sadness the mournful devastation which one man's treachery had wrought there, all his thoughts were forcibly drawn into one predominant idea, whilst the decaying energies of his frame received a new impulse to second the resolutions of his working mind. The cold and unnatural atrocity of Gomez Arias burned in his brain; he felt the agonized throb of his injury run corrosive through his veins, and impart an uncontrollable desire of revenge; the fever of excitement rose superior to that which had laid him prostrate, and he seemed impatient at the weakness that confined him to his couch.
"Before I die, poor suffering mourner," he said, turning soothingly to his daughter, "I shall see your wrongs redressed, and my insulted honor amply revenged; this sacred duty links me yet to life, and I hope fervently in God that my existence may be protracted until that period."
The renegade was there; for when revenge was the word, how could Bermudo be absent from the essence of his life? Theodora, overpowered with the emotion which her meeting with her father had produced, retired to compose her disordered spirits, and in the mean time, Don Manuel had a short but terrible explanation with the renegade: in few words this man of darkness unfolded his powers of seconding Monteblanco's plans of vengeance.
The heated mind of the old cavalier, though in need of no stimulus, nevertheless gathered fuel from the insinuating eloquence of the renegade. A plan was concerted, and an immediate appeal to the queen resolved upon; but the state of Monteblanco's health did not allow him to put in execution his determination with a promptitude consonant with his feelings. The renegade was therefore prudently concealed for the present, to avoid the danger of inquisitive curiosity, whilst the only obstacle that retarded the departure of Monteblanco for Granada, was the sickness which still confined him to his couch.
CHAPTER VIII.
Crece el tumulto, y el espanto crece:
Y todos le abandonan—uno solo
Fiel se presenta, y con valor perece.
Anon.