I could follow;
his increased confidence of manner proved to me his consciousness of
strength, and yet I could neither unravel his cunning nor detect his
artifice. Nothing then remained but to carry off these papers; and as
the hour of my own departure drew nigh, there was no time to lose. There
they are both. I hope you will be a more careful depositary than you
have been hitherto."

"And where is Linton?" cried Roland, his passionate eagerness for
revenge mastering every other feeling.

"Still your guest. He dines and does the honors of your board to-day, as
he did yesterday, and will to-morrow."

"Nay, by my oath, that he will never do more! The man is no coward, and
he will not refuse me the _amende_ I 'll ask for."

"Were he on board, it is a loop and a leap I 'd treat him to," said
Enrique.

"So should I, perhaps," said Cashel, "but the circumstances change with
the place. Here he shall have the privilege of the class he has belonged
to and disgraced."

"Not a bit of it, Roland. He is an average member of the guild; the only
difference being, with more than average ability. These fellows are all
alike. Leave them, I say. Come and rough it with me in the Basque,
where a gallant band are fighting for the true sovereign; or let us have
another dash in the Far West, where the chase is as the peril and glory
of war; or what say you to the East? a Circassian saddle and a cimeter
would not be strange to us. Choose your own land, my boy, and let us
meet this day month at Cadiz."

"But why leave me, Enrique? I never had more need of a true-hearted
friend than now."

"No, I cannot stay; my last chance of seeing Maritana depends on my
reaching Naples at once; and as to your affair with Linton, it will
be one of those things of etiquette, and measured distance, and
hair-trigger, in which a rough sailor like myself would be out of
place."

"And Maritana--tell me of her. They said that Rica had come to England."

"Rica! He dared not set foot on shore. The fellow has few countries open
to him now: nor is it known where he is."

"And is she alone? Is Maritana unprotected?"

"Alone, but not unprotected. The girl who has twice crossed the
Cordilleras with a rifle on her shoulder need scarcely fear the insults
of the coward herd that would molest her."

"But how is she living? In what rank--among what associates?"

"I only know that she maintains a costly retinue at the 'Albergo Reale;'
that her equipages, her ser