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"Was your loss in men severe?" said she abruptly. "No yes " replied Baltasar, slightly confused. "I believe there were several wounded. Why do you ask?" "And the Count's death gives you the Villabuena estates?" "It does so," answered Baltasar.
He gave the necessary orders for the admission of Herrera and Count Villabuena into the prison. The next day, however, the Count was still so fatigued and unwell from the effects of his journey, that it was found necessary to call in a physician, who forbade his leaving the house.
Hopeless of being served for affection's sake, he was meditating whom he could make his own by bribery, when a light from an open window flashed across the street, and illuminated the unprepossessing profile of Jaime the gipsy, who, in his capacity of guide, was riding in front, and a little on one side of Colonel Villabuena.
Whilst the Conde de Villabuena gazed on the temporary prison, of which he commanded a view from his balcony, and meditated how he should overcome the almost insuperable difficulties that opposed themselves to Herrera's rescue, there emerged from the door of the guard-room a man, whose gait and figure the Count thought he knew, although he was too far distant to discern his features.
His object in joining the Carlists had not been promotion, still less a zeal for the cause, but the appropriation to himself of the fair hand and broad lands of Rita de Villabuena. His prospect of obtaining these, however, seemed each day to diminish.
Amongst others, Rita de Villabuena, who had been residing with some friends at the French town of Pau, implored, and with difficulty obtained, her father's permission to rejoin him.
Apparently he had just come off a journey; his boots and dress were covered with dust, his face was unshaven, and he had the heated, jaded look of a man who has passed in the saddle the hours usually allotted to repose. "Is Count Villabuena quartered here?" said he to the servant who opened the door. "He is, Señor Comandante," replied the man.
When the dragoons arrived at the foot of the sierra, Don Baltasar and his men were already out of sight amongst its steep and dangerous paths; and Herrera, compelled to abandon the pursuit, returned mournfully to the river bank, to seek, and, if it could be found, to convey to Vittoria the body of Count Villabuena.
"The Conde de Villabuena," enquired the young man, when he had shaken the drowsy host out of his slumbers "is he still at his house between this and Tudela?"
With an exclamation of satisfaction, he struck his spurs into the flanks of his steed, and at as rapid a pace as the uneven ground would permit, ascended the contrary road, the shortest, and, as Paco had truly asserted, by far the best to the convent whither Rita de Villabuena was proceeding.
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