er than a raven's
wing.

"Have you succeeded?" she said, with one of those funereal smiles in
which something of girlhood lingers.

Victor could not keep himself from groaning. He looked in turn at the
three brothers, and then at Clara. One brother, the eldest, was thirty
years of age. Though small and somewhat ill-made, with an air that was
haughty and disdainful, he was not lacking in a certain nobility of
manner, and he seemed to have something of that delicacy of feeling
which made the Spanish chivalry of other days so famous. He was named
Juanito. The second son, Felipe, was about twenty years of age; he
resembled Clara. The youngest was eight. A painter would have seen in
the features of Manuelo a little of that Roman constancy that David has
given to children in his republican pages. The head of the old marquis,
covered with flowing white hair, seemed to have escaped from a picture
of Murillo. As he looked at them, the young officer shook his head,
despairing that any one of those four beings would accept the dreadful
bargain of the general. Nevertheless, he found courage to reveal it to
Clara.

The girl shuddered for a moment; then she recovered her calmness, and
went to her father, kneeling at his feet.

"Oh!" she said to him, "make Juanito swear that he will obey,
faithfully, the orders that you will give him, and our wishes will be
fulfilled."

The marquise quivered with hope. But when, leaning against her husband,
she heard the horrible confidence that Clara now made to him, the mother
fainted. Juanito, on hearing the offer, bounded like a lion in his cage.

Victor took upon himself to send the guard away, after obtaining
from the marquis a promise of absolute submission. The servants were
delivered to the executioner, who hanged them.

When the family were alone, with no one but Victor to watch them, the
old father rose.

"Juanito!" he said.

Juanito answered only with a motion of his head that signified refusal,
falling back into his chair, and looking at his parents with dry and
awful eyes. Clara went up to him with a cheerful air and sat upon his
knee.

"Dear Juanito," she said, passing her arm around his neck and kissing
his eyelids, "if you knew how sweet death would seem to me if given by
you! Think! I should be spared the odious touch of an executioner. You
would save me from all the woes that await me--and, oh! dear Juanito!
you would not have me belong to any one--therefore--"

Her