not track thy footsteps; I shall see thee no more on earth. I am
dying fast, but not of the wound I took from thee; let not that thought
darken thy soul, my husband! No, that wound is healed. Thought is
sharper than the sword. I have pilled away for the loss of thee and thy
love! Can the shadow live without the sun? And wilt thou never place thy
hands on my daughter's head, and bless her for her mother's sake? Ah,
yes--yes! The saints that watch over our human destinies will one day
cast her in thy way: and the same hour that gives thee a daughter shall
redeem and hallow the memory of a wife.... Leonarda has vowed to be
a mother to our child; to tend her, work for her, rear her, though in
poverty, to virtue. I consign these letters to Leonarda's charge, with
thy picture--never to be removed from my breast till the heart within
has ceased to beat. Not till Beatriz (I have so baptised her--it was thy
mother's name!) has attained to the age when reason can wrestle with the
knowledge of sorrow, shall her years be shadowed with the knowledge of
our fate. Leonarda has persuaded me that Beatriz shall not take thy name
of Nunez. Our tale has excited horror--for it is not understood--and
thou art called the murderer of thy wife; and the story of our
misfortunes would cling to our daughter's life, and reach her ears, and
perhaps mar her fate. But I know that thou wilt discover her not the
less, for Nature has a Providence of its own. When at last you meet her,
protect, guard, love her--sacred to you as she is, and shall be--the
pure but mournful legacy of love and death. I have done: I die blessing
thee!" "INEZ."

Scarce had he finished those last words, ere the clock struck: it
was the hour in which the prince was to arrive. The thought restored
Calderon to the sense of the present time--the approaching peril. All
the cold calculations he had formed for the stranger-novice vanished
now. He kissed the letter passionately, placed it in his breast, and
hurried into the chamber where he had left his child. Our tale returns
to Fonseca.

CHAPTER IX. THE COUNTERPLOT.

Calderon had not long left the young soldier before the governor of the
prison entered to pay his respects to a captive of such high birth and
military reputation.

Fonseca, always blunt and impatient of mood, was not in a humour to
receive and return compliments; but the governor had scarcely seated
himself ere he struck a chord in the conversat