Augustin for the
last week or more; and there was no word of such a thing there."

"Not likely there would be; it was all done quietly. Don Ruperto has
been living out that way up in the mountains, hiding, if you choose to
call it. I know where, but no matter. Too brave to be cautious he had
come down to San Augustin. Some one betrayed him, and going back he was
waylaid by the soldiers, surrounded, and made prisoner. There must have
been a whole host of them, else they'd never have taken him so easily.
I'm sure they wouldn't and couldn't."

"And where is he now, Ysabel?"

"In prison, as I've told you."

"But what prison?"

"That's just what I'm longing to know. All I've ye heard is that he's
in a prison under the accusation of being a highwayman. _Santissima_!"
she added, angrily stamping her tiny foot on the tesselated flags.
"They who accuse him shall rue it. He shall be revenged on them. I'll
see justice done him myself. Ah! that will I, though it costs me all
I'm worth. Only to think--Ruperto a robber! My Ruperto! _Valga me
Dios_!"

By this, the two had mounted up into the mirador--the Senorita Valverde
having come down to receive her visitor. And there, the first flurry of
excitement over, they talked more tranquilly, or at all events, more
intelligibly of the affairs mutually affecting them. In those there was
much similarity, indeed, in many respects a parallelism. Yet the
feelings with which they regarded them were diametrically opposite. One
knew that her lover was in prison, and grieved at it; the other hoped
hers might be the same, and would have been glad of it!

A strange dissimilitude of which the reader has the key.

Beyond what she had already said, the Condesa had little more to
communicate, and in her turn became the questioner.

"I can understand now, _amiga mia_, why you spoke of Don Florencio. The
Tejano prisoners have arrived, and you are thinking he's amongst them?
That's so, is it not?"

"Not thinking, but hoping it, Ysabel."

"Have you taken any steps to ascertain?"

"I have."

"In what way?"

"I've sent a messenger to Tacubaya, where I'm told they've been taken."

"Not all. Some of them have been sent elsewhere. One party, I believe,
is shut up in the Acordada."

"What! in that fearful place? among those horrid wretches--the worst
criminals we have! The Tejans are soldiers--prisoners of war. Surely
they do not deserve such treatment?"

"Deserve it or