“Can you not, by any means, endeavour to conjecture?”
“How glad I am?” he answered, as he kissed her cold and trembling hand—“the lady to whom I owe my life is gentle, good, and truthful.”
“There is no debt of life, Senhor. But would it have grieved you, now, if Claudia had done it? Then be assured she did not do it. Her manner never was to do anything good to anyone. And yet—how wonderful are things!—everybody loved her. It is no good to be good, I fear. Pedro, you are at the door, then, are you? You have taken care to hear everything. Go order a repast for the cavalier of the best we have, and men and horses to conduct him to Malaga. Be quick, I say, and show no hesitation.” At her urgent words the steward went, yet grumbling and reluctant, and glancing over his shoulder all the way along the passage. “How that old man amuses me!” she continued to the wondering Hilary, who had never dreamed that she could speak sharply; “ever since my sister’s disgrace, he thinks that his duty is to watch me! Ah! what am I to be watched for?”
“Because,” said Hilary, “there is no Spaniard who would not long to steal the beautiful young Donna.”
“No Spaniard shall ever do that. But haste; you are in such hurry for the sunny land of Anglia.”
“I do not understand the Senhorita. Why should I hurry to my great disgrace? I shall never hear the last of the money I have lost.”
“’Tis all money, money, money, in the noble England. But the friends of the Captain need not mourn; for the money was not his, nor theirs.”
This grandly philosophical, and most truly Spanish, view of the case destroyed poor Hilary’s last fond hope of any sense of a debt of honour, on the part of the Montalvans. If the money lost had been Hilary’s own, the Count of Zamora (all compact of chivalry and rectitude) might have discovered that he was bound to redeem his daughter’s robbery. But as it stood, there was no such chance. Private honour is a mountain rill that does not always lead to any lake of public honesty. All Spaniards would bow to the will of the Lord, that British guineas should slip into Spanish hands so providentially.
“We do not take things just so,” said young Lorraine quite sadly. “I must go home and restore the money. Donna Camilla, I must say farewell.”