her up to me, I
shall be back with her by day after to-morrow. The rest will be arranged
afterward."

"Will you give me your word that you are going for no other purpose?
That you will not provoke a quarrel with him?"

"I will."

The brigadier's son did not mean what he said. Who will blame him for
that?

When the moment for his departure came, his wife, breaking into tears,
obliged him once more to repeat his oath. Then holding him by the hands,
she said to him:--

"Promise me also that you will be kind to Julia; that you will not say a
harsh word to her."

"That I also agree to."

With these two promises Maximina allowed him to go. Then she went to the
window, and lifting her baby in her arms, showed him to his father, as
though still further to compel him not to expose his life.

On reaching Seville, Miguel found that his sister and Don Alfonso had
not been there. He called on Saavedra's mother, and was painfully
surprised to learn that this lady had known nothing of the deed done by
her son, nor even that he had been paying attentions to Julia. All
Miguel's doubts vanished. Saavedra had eloped with his sister to make
her his.... His mind refused even to express the word.

The first thing that he considered after he had grown a little calmer
was to find where he had taken her, since they were not in Seville. It
occurred to him that they might have gone to Cadiz, and taken a steamer
from there. But after making some inquiries he found that this
hypothesis was not supported. Then he determined to return, and ask at
all the stations of the road if possibly any one there remembered seeing
that couple, a very accurate description of whom he was able to give. He
found nothing about them until he reached the station of Algodor.

There a porter remembered having taken from one car to another such a
_caballero_ with a young lady such as Miguel described. One sure
thing--the _caballero_ had given him the fabulous fee of a duro, and
this in fact contributed no little to his having remembered.

As the railway to Andalucia separates at this station from that of
Estramadura and Portugal, Miguel felt a strong suspicion, almost
amounting to certainty, that they had gone in this latter direction, and
he took a ticket for Lisbon. On reaching there he proceeded to ask at
the principal hotels after the young Spanish couple, taking it for
granted that, if they were there, they would be settled at one of them.
In fact, he