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Updated: May 7, 2025
All at once he felt that his feet were touching the ground; and, looking around him, what was his delight to find himself close to his dear daughter Alina. “Father—dear father!” exclaimed Alina; “how did you come here so quickly, for I have only just arrived? And how did you pass by the guards?”
The woman on the pillion was closely veiled, and much muffled in her wrappings, considering the season of the year and the warmth of the weather; nor did she lift her veil when she spoke. "The child, Alina," she said, in a tone so soft and low that the words seemed rather breathed than spoken.
“And if my father do take them, wilt thou, as thou didst promise me,” said Alina, “be converted to the true faith?” “The Moor breaks not his promise. As the golondrina returns to its nest in due season, so the man of honour returns to his promise.” Then, turning to the baron, he demanded to know if he would comply with the saint’s instructions.
Alina, if thou lovest me, give me but that goblet full of water, for I am faint.” Alina would have done as her lover bade her, but just then the figure of the venerable St. Bartholomew was seen with the cross in his right hand.
Alina caught up the child, and took her away to a distant chamber in a turret of the castle, where she set her on her knee, and shed a torrent of tears on the little flaxen head. "Poor little babe! fatherless and motherless!" she cried. "Would to our dear Lady that thou wert no worse! The blessed saints help thee, for none other be like to do it save them and me."
They lingered a minute longer; but only a minute for a shrill, harsh voice from the portcullis summoned them to return. "Ralph, thou lither hilding! Alina, thou jade! Come hither at once, and get you to work. My Lady's bower yet unswept, by the Seven Sleepers! and ye lingering yonder as ye had leaden heels! By the holy bones of Saint Benedict, our master shall con you light thanks when he cometh!"
But now and then, when mine hunger for her could no longer be appeased, I used to come to the Convent of Arundel, and send word to Alina, thy nurse, to come to me thither. And so, from time to time, I had word of her. "The years passed on, and with them he grew harder and harder.
“The promise of the Moor is sacred,” said Al-Muli. “Baptize me and my household; and do thou, good baron, intercede for me with the venerable saint, for I like not this lowly posture.” “My dear Al-Muli,” sobbed Alina for joy, “the Cross and the Crescent are thus united in the mightier ocean of love and goodwill. May the two races whom one God has made be reconciled!
But there it was always, deep down in the heart's recesses, only waiting to be called on, and to come. Whoever this mysterious woman were, it was some one who had loved her her, Philippa, whom no one ever loved. For Alina, who had died in her childhood, she scarcely recollected at all.
The rose opened with some effort, and the device lay before her, written in small characters, with faded ink, on a scrap of parchment fitting into the bracelet. Philippa's one accomplishment, which she owed to her old friend Alina, was the rare power of reading. It was very seldom that she found any opportunity of exercising it, yet she had not lost the art.
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