d her, while his men set to work completing the
interrupted preparation of the breakfast. Flannels were heated for the
friction of the frail limbs; and brandy-and-water warmed, which Carmen
administered by the spoonful, skilfully as any physician,--until, at
last, the little creature opened her eyes and began to sob. Sobbing
still, she was laid in Carmen's warm feather-bed, well swathed in
woollen wrappings. The immediate danger, at least, was over; and Feliu
smiled with pride and pleasure.

Then Carmen first ventured to relate her dream; and his face became
grave again. Husband and wife gazed a moment into each other's eyes,
feeling together the same strange thrill--that mysterious faint
creeping, as of a wind passing, which is the awe of the Unknowable.
Then they looked at the child, lying there, pink checked with the flush
of the blood returning; and such a sudden tenderness touched them as
they had known long years before, while together bending above the
slumbering loveliness of lost Conchita.

--"Que ojos!" murmured Feliu, as he turned away,--feigning hunger ...
(He was not hungry; but his sight had grown a little dim, as with a
mist.) Que ojos! They were singular eyes, large, dark, and wonderfully
fringed. The child's hair was yellow--it was the flash of it that had
saved her; yet her eyes and brows were beautifully black. She was
comely, but with such a curious, delicate comeliness--totally unlike
the robust beauty of Concha ... At intervals she would moan a little
between her sobs; and at last cried out, with a thin, shrill cry:
"Maman!--oh! maman!" Then Carmen lifted her from the bed to her lap,
and caressed her, and rocked her gently to and fro, as she had done
many a night for Concha,--murmuring,--"Yo sere tu madre, angel mio,
dulzura mia;--sere tu madrecita, palomita mia!" (I will be thy mother,
my angel, my sweet;--I will be thy little mother, my doveling.) And the
long silk fringes of the child's eyes overlapped, shadowed her little
cheeks; and she slept--just as Conchita had slept long ago,--with her
head on Carmen's bosom.

Feliu re-appeared at the inner door: at a sign, he approached
cautiously, without noise, and looked.

--"She can talk," whispered Carmen in Spanish: "she called her
mother"--ha llamado a su madre.

--"Y Dios tambien la ha llamado," responded Feliu, with rude
pathos;--"And God also called her."

--"But the Virgin sent us the child, Feliu,--sent us the child for
Concha'