excitement rose superior
to that which had laid him prostrate, and he seemed impatient at the
weakness that confined him to his couch.

"Before I die, poor suffering mourner," he said, turning soothingly to
his daughter, "I shall see your wrongs redressed, and my insulted honor
amply revenged; this sacred duty links me yet to life, and I hope
fervently in God that my existence may be protracted until that period."

The renegade was there; for when revenge was the word, how could Bermudo
be absent from the essence of his life? Theodora, overpowered with the
emotion which her meeting with her father had produced, retired to
compose her disordered spirits, and in the mean time, Don Manuel had a
short but terrible explanation with the renegade: in few words this man
of darkness unfolded his powers of seconding Monteblanco's plans of
vengeance.

The heated mind of the old cavalier, though in need of no stimulus,
nevertheless gathered fuel from the insinuating eloquence of the
renegade. A plan was concerted, and an immediate appeal to the queen
resolved upon; but the state of Monteblanco's health did not allow him
to put in execution his determination with a promptitude consonant with
his feelings. The renegade was therefore prudently concealed for the
present, to avoid the danger of inquisitive curiosity, whilst the only
obstacle that retarded the departure of Monteblanco for Granada, was the
sickness which still confined him to his couch.

CHAPTER VIII.

Crece el tumulto, y el espanto crece:
Y todos le abandonan--uno solo
Fiel se presenta, y con valor perece.

_Anon._

Don Manuel de Monteblanco has already been described as a man weighed
down by years and the iron pressure of infirmities and sorrows. The
disappearance of his daughter, in whom all his thoughts, all the
affections of his heart were solely centred, tended to fill the measure
of his misery and reduce him to that gloomy state of despondency with
which his lost energies and increasing age in vain attempted to
struggle. Totally unsuccessful in his endeavours to discover the retreat
of Theodora, time at length reconciled him to his state of desolation,
but it was the resignation of despair; that feeling which makes man
acquiesce with gloomy calmness in the decrees of fate, and look with
tranquillity on the approach of death as the happy termination of his
sufferings.

Don Manuel had sent despatches, an