"It would seem," said the lady, with cold severity, "that your Excellency has converted my poor apartment into an audience-chamber."
"A thousand pardons, dear Rosaura," was the reply. "A particular friend craved a short interview."
"It is late," said the lady, pointedly. "I wish your Excellency a good-night."
"What!" cried the Count, impatiently. "You dismiss me thus?"
"I, Excellency? They say worse things of you."
"No matter. May your Excellency live a thousand years."
"With you, Rosaura," replied the Count, assuming an air of tenderness which, as Federico thought, sat supremely ill upon him, and endeavouring to take her hand. She drew it quickly back.
"The devil take the Excellency!" cried the Count, losing all self-command, and stamping angrily with his foot. Rosaura curtsied low.
"You forget my rights over you, Rosaura. I came to tell you that in a few days, as I hope, my dearest wishes will be accomplished."
"We shall see, Excellency," repeated the provoking beauty.
The Count stepped up to her, and said, with his sullen smile, "You rejoice not at it, Rosaura?"
"Love _you_, Excellency? a great statesman like you! Certainly not, Excellency."
"I grieve to hear it, my beautiful bride; but, fortunately, love often comes with marriage. You shall learn to love me, Rosaura. Our existence shall be a happy and envied one. You detest state affairs: I will leave them and devote myself solely to you. Far from the capital, we will lead a pastoral life, amidst myrtles and meadows, flocks and shepherds, in all the sweet tranquillity of a terrestrial paradise."
Whether sketched in jest or in earnest, this picture of rustic felicity had evidently few charms for Rosaura, at least in the companionship proposed. Suddenly she stepped up to the Count, took his hand, looked full into his dark serious countenance, and laughed aloud and most musically.
"What do I hear, Excellency," she exclaimed; "_you_ in myrtle groves and smiling meadows--_you_ leading a shepherd's tranquil life! Oh, ye Saints! _he_ a shepherd in the Alpuxarras. Ah! the flocks would fly and scatter themselves when they beheld the gloomy lines upon your brow. Where are sheep to be found who would be tended by that ensanguined hand? Where could _you_ find repose? Is there a place free from the echoes of the curses that martyred Liberals have heaped upon you? Where is the domestic hearth around which would not range themselves the spectres of the wretches who, at your command, have been blotted from the book of life. Count, I shudder at the thought! Holy Mother of God! is that the happy future you would compel me to share? No, no, never!--though the garrote were to encircle my neck, as it did that of the unhappy lady at Granada, who refused to betray her husband, and whom you sent to the scaffold in his stead! Has she never appeared to your Excellency, cold and pale, and with sightless eyes? For Quito's treasures would I not behold her--her and the whole ghastly train; hundreds, ay hundreds of them, in the long, black-bordered shrouds, and the bare-footed friars with their fearful _misericordia_! Mercy, mercy, Excellency! with me would come the evil spirits, and a thousand----but, good-night, good-night, Excellency."