"Is that all?" said the cavalier, when Jacinto had warbled out the last line. "There should have been another stanza, to explain what was the cause of separation, as well as how it happened that the lady came to follow the knight, as a servant; neither of which circumstances is very manifest."
"Señor," said Jacinto, "if all the story had been told, it would have made a book. It is clear, that an evil destiny separated the pair, and that love sent the lady after her lord."
"Be thou a conjuror or not," said Don Amador, musingly, "thou hast the knack ever to hit upon subjects, as well in thy songs as in thy stories, which both provoke my curiosity, and revive my melancholy. My castle, as I may say, doth 'lie on Morena's top,'—that is to say, on the ridge of Cuenza;—and Jucar is, indeed, 'far away;' but heaven hath left me no lady-love, either to die with me among the infidels, by whom I am made to bleed, or to lament me at home. An evil destiny (how evil I know not, and yet do I dread, more dark than that which prevails with a jealous heart,) hath separated me from one whom I loved,—and, doubtless, hath separated me for ever." The cavalier sighed deeply, bent his eyes for a moment on the ground, and then raising them, with a solemn look, to the page, said abruptly, "I have come to be persuaded, altogether beyond the contradiction of my reason, that thou hast, somehow, and, perhaps, by magical arts, obtained a knowledge of the history of my past life. If thou knowest aught of the fate of Leila, the lamented maid of Almeria, I adjure thee to reveal thy knowledge, and without delay! Thou shakest thy head.—Wherefore didst thou refuse to finish the story of her who bore her name, and who dwelt in the same city?"
"My lord will be angry with me," said the page, rising in some perturbation,—"I have deceived him!"
"I am sorry to know thou couldst be, in any way, guilty of deceit, though I do readily forgive thee; charging thee, however, at all times, to remember, that any deceitfulness is but a form of mendacity, and therefore as mean and degrading as it is sinful.—In what hast thou deceived me?"
"When I told my lord the story of Leila, and perceived how it disturbed him," said Jacinto, with a faltering voice, "I repented me, and told him a thing that was not true, to appease him. The Leila of whom I spoke, had dwelt in Almeria within a year past; and, perhaps, she was the maid that my lord remembered."
As the page made this confession, Don Amador sprang eagerly to his feet, and, as he seized the speaker's arm, cried, with much agitation,—
"Dost thou tell me the truth? and does she live? God be praised for ever! doth the maiden live?"
"She lived, when my father brought me from Barbary—"
"Heaven be thanked! I will ransom her from the infidels, though I give myself up to captivity as the price!"