While he lay in the ecstasy of his triumph, the loveliest creature ever seen stole swiftly up a rocky path, beset with myrtle and cornel-wood, and canopied with climbers. After some intricate turns, and often watching that no one followed her, she came to the door of a little hut embosomed in towering chestnut-trees. The door was open, and a man of great stature was lounging on a couch too short for his legs, and smoking a cigar of proportions more judiciously adapted to his own. Near one of his elbows stood a very heavy carbine, and a sword three-quarters of a fathom long; and by his other hand lay a great pitcher empty and rolled over.
As the young Donna’s footfall struck his ears, he leaped from his couch, and cocked his gun; then, recognizing the sound, replaced it, and stood indolently at his door.
“At last, you are come then!” he said, with an accent decidedly of the northern provinces (not inborn, however, but caught from comrades); “I thought that you meant to let me die of thirst. You forget that I have lost the habit of this execrable heat.”
Claudia looked up at her cousin Don Alcides d’Alcar—or, as he loved to be called, “the great Brigadier”—with a very different gaze from any poor Hilary could win of her. To this man alone the entire treasures of her heart were open; for him alone her glorious eyes no longer sparkled, flashed, or played with insincere allurements; but beamed and shone with depths of light, and profusion of profoundest love.
“Darling,” she said, as she stood on tiptoe, and sweetly pacified him; “I have laboured in vain to come sooner to you. Your commands took a long time to execute. You men can scarcely understand such things. And that tiresome Camilla hung about me; I thought my occasion would never arrive. But all has gone well: he is my slave for ever.”
“You did not allow him to embrace you, I trust?” Before he could finish his scowl, she stopped his mouth, and reassured him.
“Is it to be imagined? A miserable shaveling Briton!” But, though she looked so indignant, she knew how near she had been to that ignominy.
“You are as clever as you are lovely,” answered the Brigadier, well pleased. “But I die of thirst, my beloved one. Fly swiftly to Teresina’s store; for I dare not venture till the night has fallen. Would that you could manage your father, as you wind those striplings round your spindle!”
For the Count of Zamora had given orders that his precious nephew should be shot, if ever found upon land of his. So Claudia took the empty pitcher to fetch another half-skin of wine, as well as some food, for the great Brigadier; and, having performed this duty, met the infatuated Hilary, for the last time, at her father’s board. She wished him good night, and good-bye, with a glance of deep meaning and kind encouragement; while the fair Camilla bent over his hand, and then departed to her chamber, with full eyes and an empty heart.
