" she
cried. "Ten days to reach Tarragona!"

Then without caring for crown or court, she arrived in Tarragona,
furnished with an almost imperial safe-conduct; furnished too with gold
which enabled her to cross France with the velocity of a rocket.

"My daughter! my daughter!" cried the Marana.

At this voice, and the abrupt invasion of their solitude, the
prayer-book fell from the hands of the old couple.

"She is there," replied the merchant, calmly, after a pause during which
he recovered from the emotion caused by the abrupt entrance, and the
look and voice of the mother. "She is there," he repeated, pointing to
the door of the little chamber.

"Yes, but has any harm come to her; is she still--"

"Perfectly well," said Dona Lagounia.

"O God! send me to hell if it so pleases thee!" cried the Marana,
dropping, exhausted and half dead, into a chair.

The flush in her cheeks, due to anxiety, paled suddenly; she had
strength to endure suffering, but none to bear this joy. Joy was more
violent in her soul than suffering, for it contained the echoes of her
pain and the agonies of its own emotion.

"But," she said, "how have you kept her safe? Tarragona is taken."

"Yes," said Perez, "but since you see me living why do you ask that
question? Should I not have died before harm could have come to Juana?"

At that answer, the Marana seized the calloused hand of the old man, and
kissed it, wetting it with the tears that flowed from her eyes--she who
never wept! those tears were all she had most precious under heaven.

"My good Perez!" she said at last. "But have you had no soldiers
quartered in your house?"

"Only one," replied the Spaniard. "Fortunately for us the most loyal
of men; a Spaniard by birth, but now an Italian who hates Bonaparte; a
married man. He is ill, and gets up late and goes to bed early."

"An Italian! What is his name?"

"Montefiore."

"Can it be the Marquis de Montefiore--"

"Yes, Senora, he himself."

"Has he seen Juana?"

"No," said Dona Lagounia.

"You are mistaken, wife," said Perez. "The marquis must have seen her
for a moment, a short moment, it is true; but I think he looked at her
that evening she came in here during supper."

"Ah, let me see my daughter!"

"Nothing easier," said Perez; "she is now asleep. If she has left the
key in the lock we must waken her."

As he rose to take the duplicate key of Juana's door his eyes fell by
chance on the circular gleam of light