"What shall the king say of his brother, to the daughter of Montezuma?"
The colour rushed into Juan's cheeks; but he replied immediately, and even firmly,
"That he brings her his sister, to whom, for his own sake, he prays her to be kind and gentle."
"Does my brother tell me this?" said the king, starting. "The Great Eagle said he was alone in the world, with none of his kin remaining."
"And so I thought, until this hour," said Juan, not without embarrassment: "and now must I tell the king, that though I call this maiden my sister, and pray heaven she may prove so, yet neither she nor I have aught upon which to found our belief, but the words of one whom the Lord of Death killed, when he seized her."
Guatimozin intently eyed the maiden, who watched with painful interest the changes of his countenance and Juan's, for she understood not a word of their speech; and then said,
"Let it be so: Guatimozin will think of this. The Spanish lady is welcome—the Eagle shall speak with her a little, and then give her up to the women, that they may be good to her.—The king's house is very spacious."
He then turned gravely away, signing to the outcast pair to follow him.
They were suffered to be alone together for a brief hour, in which Magdalena, rejecting impetuously and passionately all Juan's doubts, poured out all the secrets of a life full of unhappiness, but not of crime; and Juan himself, forgetting the weakness of all her claims of consanguinity, melted into belief, and learned to call her his sister. There were indeed certain circumstances of mystery about his birth, which might have often disturbed his thoughts, had he been of an imaginative turn. The man whom he had called and esteemed his father, had died a violent death in the islands, while Juan was yet very young. He could recollect little of him that was agreeable to remember; and all that had afterwards come to his ears, only served to chill his curiosity; all persons, who had not forgotten him, representing the elder Lerma as a most depraved and infamous man. No one knew whence he had come, or if he had any relatives left in the world; and Juan remembered well, that the planters had, on several occasions, when the unnatural parent, if parent he was, had maltreated and abandoned him, taken him away from Lerma, and comforted Juan with the assurance that the villain had undoubtedly stolen him from some one. It is, however, very certain that Juan never seriously thought of doubting that this man was his parent; nor would he have recalled such trivial circumstances to his mind, had he not been staggered by the impetuosity of Magdalena, and by his own feelings of affection, into a credulity almost as ample as her own. That he should desire also to find a relative in one, who, considered without reference to the weakness shown only in her love for him, was of a soul as stainless as it was noble, is not to be doubted; and such love he could be rejoiced to return. In truth, his reasons for admitting her claims were as flimsy as hers for making them, as he came to discover, when left to examine them in solitude. They made, however, a deep and lasting impression upon his mind. Perhaps the impression would have been still deeper, had the two been permitted to remain longer together; but before Magdalena had yet been able to speak with composure, there came a train of maidens, bearing chaplets of flowers, and rich ornaments of feathers, giving Juan to understand, that it was the king's will his companion should now leave him.
Magdalena turned pale, when this command was announced to her by Juan, and seemed at first as if resolved never to be parted from him more. But being persuaded by Juan that she had nothing to fear—that the king was his friend—that they should certainly meet again,—she at last consented. She strode to the door—she listened to his words of farewell, and she sobbed upon his breast; and then departed with the happy but delusive hope of seeing him again on the morrow.