"Perfectly," she answered, "and I am glad that you _are_ here, Mr. Portlack. But you have not told me what has become of Don Christoval and his friend."
There was nothing for it--I must tell another falsehood; but Heaven would forgive me, for I meant well. So I answered that I had informed them, on learning that she was not Madame del Padron, that it was my intention to carry her home, and that on my arrival my first business would be to inform against them for having abducted her; whereupon they had prayed to be transshipped to a passing vessel; to which, after reflection, I consented, and the two scoundrels were transferred to a little Portuguese brig on the preceding day.
She sank into thought. After a while she lifted up her head and gazed slowly and with curiosity round her at the pictures, the mirrors, and the other furniture in the cabin. Her eyes next went to her bracelets, and they then met mine. I waited for her to speak.
"How long is it now, Mr. Portlack, since I was stolen from my father's house?"
"What will my father and mother think? They can not have been able to _do_ anything. That will be the hardest part to my father. They will have no idea into what part of the world I was to be carried. Will they even know that this vessel was lying off the coast to receive me?"
"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?"
"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."