Chapter IV.

Six months after these scenes the general, in an affectionate letter to his wife, announced his return from Havana, whither he had been upon important business. Ismena went to Cadiz to meet him, accompanied by a nurse who carried in her arms the supposed heir.

This child had been brought from the Iocluso, [Footnote 53] and the secret of the deception was known only to Ismena, to Nora, and to Lázaro; the latter being the person selected by Nora to obtain the infant from the asylum. How she had been able to persuade the good young man to bend himself to her wicked plot can be understood only when it is known that he believed it to have been sanctioned and arranged by his master. Lázaro doubted until Nora, who had foreseen his opposition, and was prepared to meet it, showed him the following passages in the last letter the general had written to his wife:

[Footnote 53: Establishment for the reception of abandoned infants.]

"The sails which are to bear me from you, and, with you, from all the sweetness of my life, are already spread. Adieu, therefore: I hope on my return to find you with a child in your arms, which will render our happiness complete.

"As I have told you before, you may, in the affair of which we know, and in all other's, trust Lázaro, in whom I place the most implicit confidence."

The letter ended with some tender expressions and the signature of the general.

Nora, quick to perceive the use she could make of the above passages in proving to Lázaro that the "affair of which we know," which was in reality a matter relating to money, was the same she had in hand, had kept the letter.

Lázaro, therefore, with the deepest sorrow, but the most entire devotion to his benefactor, brought the innocent little one; which thus passed from the bosom of an abandoned woman into the hands of a traitoress.

A little before the time at which we take up the thread of our story the babe had been reclaimed, and the administrator of the asylum had demanded it of Lázaro. Nora could find no means of escape from the difficulty this demand occasioned them but to send Lázaro out of the country. Ismena also vehemently urged his departure, and the devoted victim consented to go, knowing that his absence, without apparent cause and without explanation, would break the heart of his mother and of his young cousin, to whom he was soon to have been married.

He embarked secretly in a small coasting vessel bound for Gibraltar, which, being overtaken by a tempest off the perilous coast of Conil, was capsized, and all on board were lost.

This catastrophe, of which she believed herself to be the cause, overcame Ismena, and her suffering was augmented by a threatening presentiment that would allow her to fix her thoughts neither upon the past nor future without shuddering. The one reproached and the other appalled her.

{246}

Alas for the wretch that between these two phantoms drags out a miserable existence! Happy is he who, by keeping his conscience pure, preserves, amid misfortunes and sorrows, his peace of soul, the supreme good which God has promised man in this exiled state.