ully confide. Make the necessary
preparations. Each moment she may arrive."

Whilst Baltasar was speaking, Dona Carmen remained with her brow
supported on her hand, silent and sunk in reflection. She now sprang
impetuously from her chair.

"I will have naught to do with it," cried she; "you would entangle me in
a labyrinth of crime, whence the only issue would be ignominy and
punishment. You must find others to aid you in your machinations."

In his turn Baltasar rose from his seat, and, approaching the abbess,
led her back to her chair.

"Carmen," said he, in a suppressed voice, and from between his set
teeth, "is it to me that you say 'I will not?'--Carmen," he continued,
speaking low, and with his face very near to hers, "there was a time
when, for love of you and to do your bidding, I feared no punishment
here or hereafter. Have you already forgotten it? 'I hate him,' were
your words, as I sat at your feet in yon sunny Andalusian bower--'I hate
him, and in proportion to my hatred should be my gratitude to him who
rid me of his odious presence.' That night the _serenos_ found the body
of Don Fernando de Forcadell stiff and cold upon the steps of his villa.
He had had a dispute at the _monte_ table, and two men were sent to
Ceuta on suspicion of the deed. Only two persons knew who had really
done it. Ha! Carmen, only two persons!"

During this terrible recapitulation, the abbess sat motionless as a
statue, for which indeed, in her white robe and with her marble pale
complexion, she might almost have been taken. She covered her face with
her hands, and her bosom heaved so violently, that the loose folds of
drapery which shrouded it rose and fell like the waves of a troubled
ocean. When Baltasar ceased speaking she removed her hands, and
exhibited a countenance livid as that of a corpse. Her almost
preternatural paleness, the dark furrows under her eyes, and the tension
of every feature, added ten years to her apparent age.

"Is that all?" she said, in a hollow voice, to her tormentor.

"And one of those persons," resumed the pitiless Baltasar, without
replying to her question, "swore by earth and by heaven, and by the
God who made them both, never to forget the service that I--that
the other person, I would say--had rendered her, and to be ready to
requite it whenever he should point out the way. Years have flown
by since that day, and the feelings that united those two persons