This was not easy to do where no visiter to Inique’s bedside saw any reason for withholding the most important news, and in the course of a few days the dying soldier knew the worst and mastered it, and quietly desired Padilh to obtain permission for a last interview with his—his son. The word stuck in his throat. The knight replied—“As soon as your recovery is advanced, or failing that, when you feel death drawing on, I will oppose nothing to your wish, Inique. But for the present spare yourself so agitating an encounter.” “Don Pedro,” the wounded maître-de-camp answered, smiling faintly, “I wish to make my peace with the boy and acknowledge my sins, but you well understand where my most affectionate thoughts rest.” To which Padilh assented gravely. He was thinking at the moment in what manner the tidings of the dispersion of the fleet at Praya, could be suppressed without equivocation. “I will be compelled to confess the truth at last,” the honest gentleman said despairingly when alone, and still weighing the even balance of duty in his mind. “But it sadly perplexes a mortal intellect, Heaven knows, to distinguish between what is due one’s friend and one’s soul.” Indeed, the last words spoken that evening by Don Augustino were to this effect: “Send a courier to Praya and let the boy be brought here immediately. I _must_ see him once more, and I haven’t many hours to live.” But succor came unexpectedly to the upright knight, the succeeding morning. It was his custom to pace a quay, looking seaward every dawn, in anxious hope of the appearance of the missing ship, the others having already made harbor at Praya and elsewhere; and for the first time he saw a sail on the northwestern horizon. Some hours later Padilh himself, boarded the vessel and was surprised beyond measure to find his countess and her protegée on board. His gratification, however, was even greater, and so he told her, on hearing the somewhat vague account of the object of this voyage. “It was a madcap enterprise,” he said, smiling, “but the end is undoubtedly good; I would have sent for Doña Viola, if there had been the least probability of her arriving in time.” A speech which greatly reassured Doña Hermosa, who had been considering during the voyage, what good reason she could offer her lord, for sanctioning the expedition, and had found with dismay there would be none forthcoming. As ladies generally do they had laid their hearts together in the first instance, instead of their heads, and mistook sentiment for conviction, after their usual fashion.