ited only with vivid impatience. The
pique she had at first felt was soon effaced by anxiety for his safety;
but this at length gave place to agony more painful than that of
suspense--the agony of suspicion.

We have already related, by what insensible and gradual transitions the
family of Don Mariano de Silva had become confirmed in the belief, that
Don Rafael had proved traitor to his mistress as to his country.

Nevertheless, at that moment when he presented himself, to demand the
surrendering of the brigands, the sound of his voice falling upon the
ears of Gertrudis had come very near vanquishing her wounded pride.
That manly voice--whether when exchanging a few words with her father,
or hurling defiance at the ferocious Arroyo--had caused her heart to
tremble in every fibre. She required at that moment to summon up all
the resentment of love disdained, as well as all the natural modesty of
woman, to hinder her from showing herself to Don Rafael, and crying
out--

"Oh, Rafael! I can more easily bear the dagger of Arroyo, than your
desertion of me!"

"Alas! what have you done, _mio padre_?" cried she, addressing herself
to her father, as soon as Don Rafael had gone; "you have wounded his
pride by your irritating words, at the very moment when, out of regard
for us, he has renounced the vengeance which he had sworn on the grave
of his father! It may be that the words of oblivion and reconciliation
were upon his lips; and you have hindered him from speaking them now and
for ever. Ah! _mio padre_! you have ruined the last hope of your poor
child!"

The haciendado could make no reply to speeches that caused his own heart
to bleed. He deeply regretted the allusions he had made, towards an
enemy to whose generosity he was now indebted for the lives both of
himself and children.

CHAPTER FIFTY THREE.

LOVE'S MALADY.

After the departure of the bandits, a mournful tranquillity reigned in
the hacienda of Las Palmas. Gertrudis, asking herself at every moment
of the day whether Don Rafael really no longer loved her, could only
answer with certainty that she loved him, and should do so for ever.

One afternoon--it was the third after Arroyo had gone--she sat looking
over the plain as the sun was sinking slowly to the horizon. It was
just such an evening as that on which she had awaited the arrival of Don
Rafael. Now, however, the floods had retired, and the landscape had
assumed a more verdant and joyous