ver thought of such an
alliance; that your calculation took a less flattering estimate of my
relationship."

"I spoke in anger, Roland,--anger caused by your passionate resolve.
Remember, too, that I preferred holding you to your contract, in
preference to allowing you to redeem it by paying the penalty."

"Easy alternative," said Cashel, with a scornful laugh; "you scarcely
expected a beggar, a ruined gambler, could pay seventy thousand
doubloons. But times are changed, sir. I am rich now,--rich enough to
double the sum you stipulated for. Although I well know the contract is
not worth the pen that wrote it, I am willing to recognize it, at least
so far as the forfeit is concerned."

"My poor child, my darling Maritana," said Pedro, but in a voice barely
audible. The words seemed the feeble utterance of a breaking heart.

"Sorrow not for her, senhor," said Cashel, hastily. "She has no griefs
herself on such a score. It is but a few hours since she told me so."

Don Pedro was silent; but a mournful shake of the head and a still more
mournful smile seemed to intimate his dissent.

"I tell you, sir, that your own scorn of my alliance was inferior to
hers!" cried Cashel, in a voice of deep exasperation. "She even went so
far as to say that she was a party to the contract only on the condition
of its utter worthlessness. Do not, then, let me hear of regrets for
_her_."

"And you believe this?"

"I believe what I have myself witnessed."

"What, then, if you be a witness to the very opposite? What if your ears
reveal to you the evidence as strongly against, as now you deem it in
favor of, your opinion?"

"I do not catch your meaning."

"I would say, what if from Maritana's own lips you heard an avowal of her
affection, would you conceive yourself at liberty to redeem a contract
to which you were only one party, and by mere money--I care not how
large you call the sum--to reject the heart you have made your own?"

"No, no, this cannot be," cried Cashel, struggling in a conflict of
uncertainty and fear.

"I know my daughter, sir," said Pedro, with an air of pride he well knew
when and how to assume.

"If I but thought so," muttered Cashel to himself; and low as the words
were, Rica heard them.

"I ask you for nothing short of your own conviction,--the conviction of
your own ears and eyes. You shall, if you please, remain concealed in
her apartment while I question her on the subject of this attachment. If
yo