The commander of the Albatross having promised to follow all these directions to the letter, they separated; he to return to his ship with a joyful heart, and Isabella to reconnoitre the prison previous to retiring to her uncle's house.
She passed the guard-house at a slow pace and at such distance as to avoid observation, but sufficiently near to ascertain that all the guard, four in number besides the corporal, were wrapped up in their cloaks and stretched out sound asleep upon the stone floor of the guard-room, which was lighted by a large clumsy lamp sufficiently to allow her to see its interior. The sentry at the door, who was slowly pacing backwards and forwards with a paper segar in his mouth, was the only one awake.
As she bent her steps homeward, she perceived some one approaching her, in the very direction that she was going, with an uncertain, faltering footstep that denoted considerable intoxication. To avoid him she turned to the right with the purpose of making a circuit; but, before she had gone ten yards with that intention, she perceived that the stranger had quickened his pace and changed his direction, coming directly towards her. Exceedingly alarmed, she turned short round and ran, and in a moment perceived that her pursuer was likewise running, and rapidly gaining upon her. Fear lent her speed, and with the swiftness of a hunted deer she flew across the plaza towards an open space, terminated at its further extremity by the precipitous cliff that the town is built upon, and which we have mentioned more than once. Her intention was to turn quickly round the corner of a house that stood within four feet of the edge of the cliff, and gain another street; or, if there were no other means of escape, to take refuge in the house of a poor widow, one of her pensioners, and obtain a guide and protector to her uncle's house.
Her pursuer was no other than her self-constituted lover, Don Gregorio. He had dined that day with a party of officers, and had dipped rather deeper into the bottle than, to tell the truth, he was often guilty of doing. He suspected that Isabella was in the habit of visiting the prison; but as she was generally accompanied, in all her rambles, by one or both her cousins, he had thought nothing more of the circumstance. But now he was convinced that she was just returning from, or going to, a nocturnal appointment with the prisoner Morton, who had always been an object of his hatred, and in an instant his jealousy was in full operation.