“Keep up heart, mother!” says Ludwig, feigning a cheerfulness he far from feels. “’Twill be all right yet, and we’ll see them home to-morrow morning—if not before. You know that father has often stayed out all night.”
“Never alone,” she despondingly answers. “Never with Francesca. Only when Gaspar was along with him.”
“Well, Gaspar’s with him now, no doubt; and that’ll make all safe. He’s sure to have found them. Don’t you think so, Cypriano?”
“Oh! yes,” mechanically rejoins the cousin, in his heart far from thinking it so, but the reverse. “Wherever they’ve gone he’ll get upon their tracks; and as Gaspar can follow tracks, be they ever so slight, he’ll have no difficulty with those of uncle’s horse.”
“He may follow them,” says the señora, heaving a sigh, “but whither will they lead him to. Alas, I fear—”
“Have no fear, tia!” interrupts the nephew, with alacrity, an idea occurring to him. “I think I know what’s detaining them—at least, it’s very likely.”
“What?” she asks, a spark of hopefulness for an instant lighting up her saddened eyes; Ludwig, at the same time, putting the question.
“Well,” replies Cypriano, proceeding to explain, “you know how uncle takes it, when he comes across a new object of natural history, or anything in the way of a curiosity. It makes him forget everything else, and everybody too. Suppose while riding over the campo he chanced upon something of that sort, and stayed to secure it? It may have been too big to be easily brought home.”
“No, no!” murmurs the señora, the gleam of hope departing suddenly as it had sprung up. “It cannot be that.”
“But it can, and may,” persists the youth, “for there’s something I haven’t yet told you, tia—a thing which makes it more probable.”