At length they came to where the forests and the rocks terminated, and a secure road lay before them; and here Pelayo paused to take his leave, appointing a number of his followers to attend and guard them to the nearest town.
When they came to part, the merchant and his wife were loud in their thanks and benedictions; but for some time the daughter spake never a word. At length she raised her eyes, which were filled with tears, and looked wistfully at Pelayo, and her bosom throbbed, and after a struggle between strong affection and virgin modesty her heart relieved itself by words.
“Señor,” said she, “I know that I am humble and unworthy of the notice of so noble a cavalier, but suffer me to place this ring on a finger of your right hand, with which you have so bravely rescued us from death; and when you regard it, you shall consider it as a memorial of your own valor, and not of one who is too humble to be remembered by you.” With these words she drew a ring from off her finger and put it upon the finger of Pelayo; and having done this, she blushed and trembled at her own boldness, and stood as one abashed, with her eyes cast down upon the earth.
Pelayo was moved at her words, and at the touch of her fair hand, and at her beauty as she stood thus troubled and in tears before him; but as yet he knew nothing of woman, and his heart was free from the snares of love. “Amiga” (friend), said he, “I accept thy present, and will wear it in remembrance of thy goodness.” The damsel was cheered by these words, for she hoped she had awakened some tenderness in his bosom; but it was no such thing, says the ancient chronicler, for his heart was ignorant of love, and was devoted to higher and more sacred matters; yet certain it is, that he always guarded well that ring.
They parted, and Pelayo and his huntsmen remained for some time on a cliff on the verge of the forest, watching that no evil befell them about the skirts of the mountain; and the damsel often turned her head to look at him, until she could no longer see him for the distance and the tears that dimmed her eyes.
And, for that he had accepted her ring, she considered herself wedded to him in her heart, and never married; nor could be brought to look with eyes of affection upon any other man, but for the true love which she bore Pelayo she lived and died a virgin. And she composed a book, continues the old chronicler, which treated of love and chivalry, and the temptations of this mortal life,—and one part discoursed of celestial things,—and it was called the “Contemplations of Love;” because at the time she wrote it she thought of Pelayo, and of his having received her jewel, and called her by the gentle name of “Amiga;” and often thinking of him, and of her never having beheld him more, in tender sadness she would take the book which she had written, and would read it for him, and, while she repeated the words of love which it contained, she would fancy them uttered by Pelayo, and that he stood before her.[58]
