But all the time I spoke to her my apprehension was very great, my nerves strung to their bitterest endurance, my fear terrible that she would hear the man below going forth, that she might move to the window and see him--and that, thus seeing, be crushed by the sight.
For I knew that he was moving now--that he was passing away forever from this gloomy spot which held the one thing in all the world that was his, and linked him to the wife he had loved so dearly; knew that, solitary and alone, he was about to set forth into a dreary world which held no home for him nor creature to love him in his old age. I, too, heard the bridle jangling again; upon the rough boards of the stable beneath the windows of the fonda I heard the dead, dull thump of a horse's hoofs; I knew that the animal was moving--that he was setting out upon his journey of darkness and despair.
"You are sad, Mervan," she said, her cheek against mine, while her voice murmured in my ear. "Your words are brave, yet all else belies them."
"It is not for myself," I answered. "Not for myself."
The starry eyes gazed into mine, the long, slim hand rested on my shoulder.
"For whom?" she whispered. "For whom? For him? My father?"
I bowed my head--from my lips no words seemed able to come--yet said at last:
"For him. Your father." Then, for a moment, we sat there together, saying nothing. But soon she spake again.
"My thoughts of him are those of pity only, now," she murmured once more. "Pity, deep as a woman's heart can feel. And--and--my love--remember, I never knew who my father was until that scene in the inn at Lugo--thought always his, our name was in truth Belmonte. The secret was well kept--by Eaton, for his own ends, doubtless; by my father's friend, the priest who had once been as he was, for his past friendship's sake. If I judged him harshly, a life of pity for his memory shall make atonement."
As she said these words, while I kissed and tried to comfort her, she rose from where we were sitting and went to the window, I not endeavouring to prevent her now, feeling sure that he was gone; for all had become very still; there was no longer any sound in the stable, nor upon the snow, which, as I had seen as the day broke, had frozen and lay hard as iron on the ground beneath it.