"Oh, yes," said I, "they will know that. Some one is certain to have followed the sailors and the Spaniards as they marched with you to the boat."
"Would there be any papers, any letters, do you think," said she, "on the body of the man who you said was killed, from which my father might learn that this vessel's destination was Cuba?"
"I do not know. Most probably not."
"What a wanton act of wickedness! What unnecessary, barbarous cruelty!" she exclaimed. "Had I been driven mad, it would not have been strange. We had just arrived from a ball, when my father cried out that there was a crowd of men outside. He told me to run upstairs. I can not imagine that he suspected the errand on which they had come. I believed that the men had arrived to plunder the house: it is situated on a lonely part of the coast. I went into a room, and almost at that moment I heard the report of a gun. The house is an old-fashioned building, the walls very thick. I was so far away from the hall that no sound reached me, but in a short time I heard foot-steps, and the noise of doors violently opened, and the voices of men exclaiming in Spanish. The door of my room was tried; I had turned the key, but the lock was an old one. The two Spaniards put their shoulders against the door, and it flew open; then I recollect a few moments of struggling and shrieking, and nothing more."
"Did you never fear that Don Christoval would one day or night attempt to carry you off?"
"Never," she responded, with a note of vehemence disturbing her calm tones, and I saw a flash in her brown eyes.
"He evidently kept himself acquainted with your movements."
"Yes," she answered; "in another week we were going abroad. We should have been starting about now, or to-morrow."
"He told me that. Who was the spy he employed, I wonder?"
She reflected, and answered: "No member of our household, I am sure. What sort of person is Don Lazarillo de Tormes?"