“Manuela!” interrupted the victim, in a soft, unbelieving voice, and with an eager, wistful look at the exquisite landscape again,—“is it possible?”
“Sir, you’re a fool!” shouted the old soldier, unable to contain himself. “Pedro told me much about you, but he did not say you were a fool!”
“Impossible! I knew it must be a dream,” murmured Lawrence, as if to himself, “I was never called a fool before. No gentleman would have done it—least of all an English gentleman.”
This shot, although not aimed, hit the mark fairly.
“Forgive me, senhor,” said the colonel, modifying his tone, though evidently still much annoyed, “but your manners and language are so strange that, really—”
He stopped, as a new light broke upon him.
“Surely,” he said, “you cannot have been in ignorance all this time that Manuela is my daughter?”
“Tell me,” cried Lawrence, suddenly shaking off the dream of unbelief, advancing a step, and gazing so intensely into the colonel’s eyes that the man of war made a quick, involuntary, motion with his right hand towards his sword,—“Tell me, Colonel Marchbanks—is Manuela, who, I thought, was an Inca princess, really your daughter!”
“I know nothing about the Inca princesses, senhor,” replied the old man, sternly, but with a perplexed air; “all I know is that the disguised girl with whom you have been unfortunately travelling of late is my daughter, and, although your ignorance of the fact accounts in some degree—”
He got no further, for Lawrence gave a full, free, shout of joy, such as he had not vented since he was a schoolboy, raised himself to his full height, and threw up his arms, clearing off a very constellation of crystal gimcracks from a chandelier in the mighty stretch, and exclaimed—