“Oh, Ava, my Infanta!” he murmurs pressing her in his arms, “I could stay here for ever! Tell me again you love me! Repeat it a thousand times!” The language of love is the same in all ages. This was said nearly a thousand years ago, and has been repeated since, millions of times, but what matter? When soul speaks to soul, however fervently, language has limits, therefore there is a certain sameness in the expression. While the hot words of love are on his lips, the branches of the trees are parted by unseen hands, a group of dark, muffled figures rush out, daggers glitter in the moonlight, and before he can draw his sword he is mastered. Cords bind him hand and foot, a mask is placed upon his face, and he is hurried below into the deep dungeon of the castle. The treason is so vile, the act so base, for awhile it seems to him like the glamour of a dream, but the weight of the heavy fetters pressing into his flesh, the dark and narrow cell where light barely penetrates, the damp cold that chills his blood, the shame, the loneliness, the silence--these are no dreams! “Ah, Ava! Ava! you never loved me!” he cries in his anguish. “Your baneful charms served but as a bait. Now God forgive you, lady! my heart will break, and by your act! The Moors will rejoice, as they pour over the land, that my hand is shortened and I cannot strike! Alas! falseness is in your blood! Who could guess that those heavenly eyes were but as nets to lure me? Ah, King Don Garcia, is this the honour of a Christian knight? Fool, madman that I was, I knew they were traitors, and for the sake of a woman I am trapped, like a page seeking butterflies!” Thus did the unhappy Conde complain, returning ever to the name of the Infanta. Her treachery was the deepest wound of all. Now it is that the _romanceros_ take up the tale of his captivity, and thus they sing: “They have carried him into Navarre, the great Conde de Castila, and they have bound him sorely, hand and heel! “The tidings up to the mountains go, and down among the valleys! “To the rescue! to the rescue, ho!” And the Infanta? Need I say that charming princess did not deserve his accusations? But she was forced to dissemble, lest his life should be taken by her father, as cruel and remorseless a parent as ever figured in fairy tale or song. Such monsters were frequently met with in the olden time, and the nature of their characters and motives are hard to read by the light of modern times. It is possible indeed such may still exist, but now they snare their daughters’ lovers by other means than poison and iron chains, though, perchance, they leave them as husbands as disconsolate as before. CHAPTER XXIII Doña Ava