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"You will not expect me, Señor Conde," said he, "to give an immediate answer to a proposal of such importance. I feel sincerely grateful to you, but must crave a short delay for consideration." "Let that delay be as brief as possible," said Villabuena. "In the present circumstances, the value of assistance will be doubled by its promptness.
Whilst the Count and the escort retraced their steps down the hill, and halted in the fields upon its north side, whence they had the option of returning to the mountains by the way they had come, or of striking off into the high-road to Salinas and Oñate, which ran at a short distance to their right, Colonel Villabuena and the gipsy, concealed amongst the trees that clothed the summit of the eminence, noted what passed in the village.
Tying his horse to a ring in the wall, he obeyed the signal. The room into which, after passing through a corridor, Colonel Villabuena was now introduced, was one of those appropriated to the reception of guests and visitors to the convent.
It was early on an August morning, about a fortnight subsequently to the rescue of Count Villabuena, that a man in an officer's uniform, and who, to judge from the stripe of gold-lace on his coat cuff, held the rank of major, knocked at the door of a house of the description last referred to.
"I am ready to accompany you to him," said Baltasar, by no means sorry to break off his dialogue with the Count. "General Zumalacarregui also requests your presence, Señor Conde," said the aide-de-camp. "I will shortly wait upon him," replied Villabuena. The two officers left the house, and the Count re-entered his sleeping apartment to complete his toilet.
Before, however, he had succeeded in calming Rita's fears, he again perceived the count, who had left his horse, and was advancing slowly towards them, with a grave, but not an angry countenance. On his near approach, Luis was about to address him; but by a wave of his hand Villabuena enjoined silence.
One of these was an aide-de-camp of Cordova, Herrera was another, and in the third, to his unutterable astonishment and consternation, Baltasar recognized Count Villabuena. There was a moment's silence, during which the cousins gazed at each other; the Count sternly and reproachfully, Baltasar with dilated eyeballs and all the symptoms of one who mistrusts the evidence of his senses.
Moreover, there could be little sympathy or durable friendship between men of such opposite qualities and dispositions. Count Villabuena had the feelings and instincts of a nobleman, in the real, not the conventional sense of the term: he was proud to a fault, stern, and unyielding, but frank, generous, and upright. Don Baltasar was treacherous, selfish, and unscrupulous.
Shocked and confounded by this proof of his kinsman's villany, the Count dropped the other pistol and remained sad and silent. "You doubt no longer?" said Herrera. "May it not have been accident?" said the Count, almost imploringly. "No Villabuena could commit so base and atrocious a crime." "None but he," said Herrera. "I watched him as he took his aim, not twenty paces from you.
Don Baltasar was a bold and efficient officer, and the opportunity was favourable for exhibiting his qualities. The Count was at first much pleased with him; and soon afterwards, when the Carlists were temporarily dispersed, and the insurrection was seemingly at an end, Major Villabuena accompanied his cousin to France, and was presented to Rita as her intended husband.
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