"It is too true;" was her reply to his enquiring eyes; "Ferdinand loves Alice Coningsby; and my invaluable child would make herself the price of her brothers happiness."
"Marcella," replied Santa Cruz, turning with solemnity to his daughter; "this is not what I expected from you. You dishonour your father and your brother, by your petition. You may accompany your mother to his sick couch; and for the rest, should he recover, I hope he will find a fitter oblation to his blind passions, than a sister's and a parent's conscience."
Marcella rose humbled from her knees; and in speechless sorrow left the apartment. The Marquis looked after her and sighed; and the Marchioness taking his hand, pressed it to her lips, wet with her drowning tears, and exclaimed;--"Better that we had never met, than that the purest offspring of our heaven-sanctified union, should be consigned to a living tomb! Oh, Santa Cruz, why is she to be our victim!"
Santa Cruz did not wait for the tedious embarkation of the troops, now under orders for Africa; but set forward immediately, accompanied by his wife and daughter; who both assumed the privileged habits of _Sisters of Mercy_, in this their pilgrimage to a land of war and suffering.
When he arrived at Ceuta, he was ignorant of the attempt at storming the place. The courier with that intelligence, had been taken by an Algerine row-boat, and carried into Oran.
By this capture, Ripperda became acquainted with all that had passed in the rescued fortress; for the messenger was sent in irons to him: and the dastardly communicativeness of the man was too clear an interpreter of the brief account in the dispatches.
The Basha's wounds being aslant, and in the muscles of his breast, were slight and easy of cure; but that on his mind was not to be healed, when on awaking from his swoon, he found himself thrown across a camel, and in full retreat from the fortress he believed in his hands. He was no sooner within his own entrenchments, than both officers and men felt the weight of his disappointment. He summoned their several commanders into his pavilion, and accused them of cowardice, for having made so unnecessary, and therefore shameful a flight.
Adelmelek pleaded two reasons for this conduct. Their Basha's supposed mortal wound; and its befalling him in the moment of sun-rise, seemed so signal a judgement on the Moors for their breach of the prophet's ordinance, in pursuing the warfare into the sabbath morn, that with one consent they made the only expiation in their power, by abandoning the scene of their impiety.