"Release the hand of that man, Camillia Moraquitos!" exclaimed Don Juan, with suppressed fury, as he beheld his daughter and Paul Lisimon seated side by side; "release his hand, or never again dare to call me father!" The young girl raised her eyes to the face of the Spaniard and met his angry gaze with a glance of calm defiance.
"Why should I take my hand from his?" she said, calmly; "we have been playfellows, companions, and friends from childhood. You have seen our hands locked together ere to-day; why do you wish to part us now?"
Though the voice of the Spanish girl was calm and unfaltering, and although she met her father's gaze without one quiver of her snowy eyelids, her slender form trembled with emotion as she spoke.
"Shall I tell you why?" asked her father.
"Yes; I wait to learn."
"Because Paul Lisimon, the man whose boyhood has been spent beneath this roof, whose education has been shared with you, who has ever been treated as a son, rather than as a dependent, that man is a thief!"
Had Camillia been unprepared for this accusation, the blow might, for a moment, have paralyzed her. But she had heard all from Paul's own lips, and she was prepared for the worst.
"He is no thief!" she exclaimed, proudly; "were he that, he would not have come hither to seek for sympathy from Camillia Moraquitos."
"Deluded girl, he has been discovered in an act of daring robbery—robbery which is most contemptible, being allied to treachery of the basest nature. He was trusted, and he betrayed his trust."
The lip of the Spanish girl curled with unutterable scorn.