"Señor," said the page, sorrowfully, "you forget that you are now a prisoner in another world."
The cavalier smote his breast, crying, "It is true! and the revealment comes too late!—Silly boy!" he continued, reproachfully, "why didst thou delay telling me this, until this time, when it can only add to my griefs? Why didst thou not speak it, at Tlascala, that I might have departed forthwith from the land, to her rescue?"
"My lord would not have deserted his kinsman, Don Gabriel?"
"True again!" exclaimed Don Amador, with a pang. "I could not have left my knight, even at the call of Leila. But now will I go to Don Gabriel, and confessing to him my sorrow, will prevail upon him straightway to depart with me; for here, it must be plain to him, as it is to me, that God is not with us.
"Alas! señor," said the page, "it is not possible that you should go to Don Gabriel, nor that you should ever more leave this heathen land."
"Dost thou confess, then," demanded the novice, "that Abdalla has deceived me, and that I am held to perpetual captivity?"
"Señor," said the boy, clasping his hands, and weeping bitterly, "we shall never more see Spain, nor any land but this. The fate of Don Hernan, and of all his men, is written; they are in a net from which they cannot escape; and we, who are spared, obtain our lives only at the price of expatriation. My father remembered his protector,—my lord is saved; but he shares our exile!"
At this confirmation of his worst suspicions, the countenance of Don Amador darkened with despair and horror.
"And Abdalla, thy father, has plotted this foul, traitorous, and most bloody catastrophe? And he thinks, that, for my life's sake, I will divide with him the dishonour and guilt of my preservation?"
"My lord knows not the wrongs of my father," said Jacinto, mournfully, "or he would not speak of him so harshly."