"Still, if he knows that until a few days ago I deemed you a boy----"
"Knows it!" she exclaimed. "Oh, my God! have I not told him so a hundred times--sworn that we were but strangers thrown together scarce a month past; had never met before. And to all my vows and protestations he replies: 'Knowing you now to be a woman--as I have myself by chance discovered--he must love you as I do. I will not save him to steal you from me.'"
"Yet, with this refusal on his lips, you yield--or appear to yield."
"My father! My father!" she cried, flinging her arms madly around my neck. "My father! My father! For his sake I must yield. Oh, my love, my love, my love--I must."
* * * * * * * * *
I cannot write down--in absolute truth, cannot recall--our last sad parting, our frenzied words, our fond embraces. Suffice it that I say we tore ourselves apart at the sound of the mute's footsteps--that Juana was borne away almost insensible.
For that we should never meet again in this world we recognised--we were parted forever. I had found and won--although till lately unknown to myself!--the most fond and loving heart that had ever yielded itself up to a man--found it only as I stood upon the brink of my grave.
Yet if there were anything that could reconcile me to my loss of her it would be that grave, I knew; that--or the casting of my ashes to the wind after my body was consumed by the braséro--would bring the oblivion I desired. And, since she, too, meant to die the moment her father was safe, neither would be left to mourn the other. At least the oblivion of death would be the happy lot of both. Yet, as now the hours followed one another, as I heard them strike upon the bells of all the churches in this old city, and boom forth solemnly from the cathedral tower--wondering always, yet resignedly, when I should hear them for the last time; wondering, too, when the key would once more grate in the lock and I should be summoned to my doom--I cursed myself for never having penetrated Juan's disguise, for never having guessed she was a woman. Sir George Rooke had done so, I knew now; that was what he meant by his solemn warnings to me--fool that I was, not to be as far-seeing as he!
There were many things, which I now recalled, that should also have opened my eyes--her timidity, her nervousness, the strange power of mustering up courage at a moment of imminent danger; also the frequent change of colour; the remaining in the inn kitchen all one night; the shriek for assistance at the barrier encounter. And yet I had been blind, and thought it was a boy who rode by my side through all the perils we had passed.
I might have saved her had I but had more insight--might have refused to let her accompany me; have sternly ordered her to travel in some other way than along the danger-strewn path which I had come. She would have been safe now--what mattered it what had befallen me!--would have been free, with no hideous necessity of taking her own life to escape from the love which Morales forced upon her.