The room into which, after passing through a corridor, Colonel Villabuena was now introduced, was one of those appropriated to the reception of guests and visitors to the convent. The apartment was plainly furnished with a table and a few wooden chairs; and in a recess hung a large ebony crucifix, before which was placed a hassock, its cloth envelope worn threadbare by the knees of the devout. But if the room of itself offered little worthy of note, the case was far different with the person who now ushered Don Baltasar into it. This was a woman about forty years old, possessed of one of those marked and characteristic physiognomies which painters are fond of attributing to the inhabitants of southern Europe. Her age was scarcely to be read upon her face, whose slight furrows seemed traced by violent passions rather than by the hand of time: she had the remains of great beauty, although wanting in the intellectual; and the expression of her face, her compressed lips, and the fixed look of her eyes, went far to neutralize the charm which her regular features, and the classical oval of her physiognomy, would otherwise have possessed. The outline of her tall figure was veiled, but not concealed, by her monastic robe, from the loose sleeves of which protruded her long thin white hands. After closing the door, she seated herself beside a table, upon which she reposed her elbow, and motioned her visiter to a chair. A slight degree of agitation was perceptible in her manner, as she waited in silence for Don Baltasar to communicate the motive of his unseasonable arrival. This he speedily did. "You must do me a service, Carmen," said he. "My cousin Rita is now within an hour's ride of this place. She comes hither expecting to find her father. She must be detained captive." "What!" exclaimed the abbess, "is your suit so hopeless as to render such hazardous measures adviseable? What is to be gained by such an act of violence? Her father will inevitably seek and discover her, and disgrace and disappointment will be the sole result of your mad scheme." "Her father," replied Baltasar gloomily, "will give us no trouble." "How?--no trouble! If all be true that I have heard of Count Villabuena, and of his affection for his only surviving child, he is capable of devoting his life to the search for her." "Count Villabuena," said Baltasar, "now stands before you. The father of Rita is dead." "Dead!" exclaimed the abbess with a start. "How and when did he die?" "He was shot in a skirmish." "In a skirmish!" repeated Dona Carmen. "He held no military command." "I was escorting him with a few men to attend a junta. We were attacked by a superior force, from which we escaped, thanks to an intervening river. A few shots were exchanged, the Count thrust himself into the fire, and fell." The abbess seemed to reflect a moment, and then fixed a keen and searching look upon the countenance of Baltasar. "Was your loss in men severe?" said she abruptly.