m had only served to stimulate his passion; and he was
bent upon making her his at any price, and by any means. He was
sufficiently acquainted with her character to be convinced that his
prospect of obtaining her hand was any thing but improved by her
father's death and that to her the wealthy possessor of her family's
estates would be as unwelcome a wooer as the needy soldier of fortune.
He did not doubt that, after the first violence of her grief should
subside, she would return to France, where some of her mother's
relatives were resident; and that, when next he heard of her, it would
be as the bride of his fortunate rival. The picture thus conjured up
caused him to grind his teeth with fury; and he swore to himself a deep
oath that she should be his at any risk, and if, by the boldest and most
unscrupulous measures, that consummation could be brought about. A plan
occurred to him which he thought could not fail of success, and by which
the obstinacy of the self-willed girl must, he believed, be overcome. It
was a hazardous scheme, even in that unsettled and war-ridden country,
where men were too much occupied in party strife to attend to the strict
administration of justice; but Baltasar did not lack resolution, and the
prize was worth the peril. One thing he wanted; a bold and quick-witted
confederate, and him it was not so easy to find. No man had fewer
friends in his own class than Don Baltasar, and by his inferiors he was
generally detested on account of his harsh and overbearing demeanour. Of
this he was aware; and he vainly racked his brain to find a man in whom
he could confide. The details of his nefarious project were already
arranged in his mind, and only this one difficulty had yet to be
overcome; when, at two hours after dark, he entered the streets of
Onate. Hopeless of being served for affection's sake, he was meditating
whom he could make his own by bribery, when a light from an open window
flashed across the street, and illuminated the unprepossessing profile
of Jaime the gipsy, who, in his capacity of guide, was riding in front,
and a little on one side of Colonel Villabuena. The sight of those
sinister features, on which rapacity and cunning had set their stamp,
was as a sudden revelation to Don Baltasar, to whom it instantly
occurred that the gitano was the very man he sought. The circumstance of
his belonging to a race despised, and almost persecuted, by the people
amongst whom they dwelt, was an a