"Let me go ahead and look over the ground. I will signal when it is
safe to follow. I have reasons of my own for wanting to get there
without losing a minute; otherwise, I would wait until to-morrow, to
look it over by daylight and lay my own trap. But I will surely let you
know if I have found him."
"How can you signal, Mr. Warren Jarvis? We have no telephones in
Seguro." Jarvis walked over toward the old paneled window.
"With a light. See over here--there is the castle; you can of course
see it through the window. I was asking all sorts of questions of old
Pedro when he was in my room. He knows every foot of that land, even if
he has been afraid to go near it for fifteen years or so."
"Well, what will you do?"
"Just as Paul Revere's friend did in the early days in my country: I'll
put a light somewhere in one of those towers, and you can see it from
this room or through one of the windows upstairs here. It will shine in
an hour at the most. You won't have long to wait!"
"But if it does not shine?" and she paled at the thought.
"I'll be too busy swapping lead for brimstone with Mr. Spook to stop
and hang a lantern!"
XV
MYSTERIOUS INFLUENCES
The Princess of Aragon gazed into the republican eyes of the Kentuckian
with a glowing fire which was contrary to all rules and conventions of
the divine right of kings. No common man should have been given such a
glimpse of empire; but, in justice to the magic of such glances which
come once from the eyes of every good woman, for some good man, in each
lifetime, it must be acknowledged that their potent wizardry turns the
commonplace, even the tawdry surroundings of a thousand million
every-day lives, into dazzling kingdoms of love.
Warren Jarvis felt the thrill, and he lost his humorous poise: the
heart-breaking seriousness of it all now came to his realization. How
he wanted to draw her to him, forgetting all the differences in
nativity, the social and political conditions which separated them so
insufferably!
Back in New York she had been to him as any other sweet, well-bred
girl; but here, in the Land of the Middle Ages, there were centuries
between them.
He wished to touch her hand, and yet so deep was his reverence--not for
her family position, but for her own proud poise of soul--that he
stifled his desire and dropped his eyes, ashamed of his own weakness!
The girl divined his thoughts better than he realized.
She had stepped upon the low platform at the base of the stairs, and
thus her face was on a level with his.
"Oh, Mr. Jarvis--you are brave, so brave! I never can tell you how you
have sustained me, in my fears and grief. I can never let you realize
how gallant I believe you to be for what you are doing to-night for my
sake."
Jarvis shook his head in deprecation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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