e name of all the saints!" Edgar cried, "you must be Don
Rafaele's faithful servant! I recognise you. Where is _he_? My strange
presentiment is going to come true."

The little man implored Edgar to go with him at once.

He took him to one of the most distant suburbs, climbed with him to the
garret of a miserable house, and--what a spectacle! Sick, worn to a
shadow, with all the traces of the most mortal suffering upon his
deathlike face, Don Rafaele Marchez was lying upon a bed of straw, with
a girl praying by his side. When Edgar came in, the girl rushed up to
him, and drew him to the side of the old man, crying in a tone of the
warmest delight--

"Father, father! this is he, is it not?"

"Yes," said the old man, his dim eyes brightening as he raised his
folded hands to heaven, "it is he--our preserver. Ah, Don Edgar, who
would have believed that the fire which burned within me for my country
and freedom would have turned upon me for my destruction."

After the first outpourings of mingled delight and regret, Edgar
learned that Don Rafaele's enemies had managed, after the establishment
of peace, to bring charges against him causing him to be regarded with
suspicion by the government. He was sentenced to be banished, and his
property was confiscated. He fell into the deepest poverty. His devoted
daughter and his faithful servant supported him by dancing and playing.

"Emanuela and Biagio Cubas, of course!" Ludwig cried out. And all the
others repeated after him, "Of course, of course--Emanuela and Biagio
Cubas!"

The hostess enjoined silence on the ground that, although there might
be many things which could be gradually explained, the narrator ought
not to be interrupted until he had come to the end of his story.
Moreover she felt no doubt that as soon as Edgar saw the lovely
Emanuela he must, of course, have fallen desperately in love with her.

"That, of course, is exactly what he did do," said Euchar, a slight
redness overspreading his cheeks. Even before this particular meeting
with her, on other occasions of his seeing that marvellously
beautifully child, he had felt the most distinct presentiments of what
would follow, and a sense of the deepest affection, like nothing which
he had ever experienced before. He immediately set to remedy the
condition of affairs. He took away Don Rafaele, Emanuela, and the
trusty Cubas, to a country estate belonging to his uncle. And in
arranging this I was of some assista