“I knew it, and therefore I dared not look,” she replied.
“Look at him now,” pleaded Urraca.
The guards were leading him out, and his head was bent to the ground; but at that moment their eyes met, and both felt that he must not die.
That night he was in his prison. She could not rest in her chamber: the guard had respect for her orders, for she was an earl’s daughter, and he let her stand behind an arch where she could hear him talking with his faithful esquire.
“Think no more of Xiména,” said the esquire: “she loves you not.”
“Nay, say not so,” he answered. “Wrong her not. I know she loved me, and she could not change; therefore she loves me yet. As she was to me when I encountered the Conde, so was I to her when she denounced me to the king; and in what she has done to honour her father’s memory, she has shown her true nobility.”
“It may be very grand,” said the esquire, “but it is yet hard you should have to die.”
“Hard! Of what use would life be to me if Xiména will not be mine? I have only one use for it; and if she requires it of me, it is a joy to yield it up at her behest.”
When Xiména heard him express so much devotion for her, and judge her so justly and tenderly, she could bear to hear no more, lest her tears should betray her. She withdrew to her chamber, but could not sleep; but when her tired eyelids, weary with watching, closed, there seemed to come a sweet, soft voice, as of an angel, which spoke of pardon and forgiveness, and of mercy more sweet than justice. And before her eyes there floated visions of terrible Moorish hordes encompassing her native land, spreading fire and sword over its smiling plains; and there rode out against them a single youth, clad in bright armour, and wherever he raised his flashing sword the ranks of the enemy gave way and fled before him.
And when the morning light came in, and chased these phantasms away, she rose and went to the king, and asked the liberation of him whose condemnation she had sought yesterday.