"Speak not of Guzman--forget him.--Have ye heard, my masters! and well taken note of what is spoken? Now begone, all, and leave me alone with my recovered prodigal.--Juan--Juan Lerma,--Juan of Castillejo," he cried, as soon as the wondering audience had vanished; "if Guzman have confessed to you, you must know why I have been maddened into wrath and injustice.--But thy sister, Juan, where is thy sister? my poor Magdalena? Ah, Juan! it was but a fiendish aberration, that set me against the child of my sister!" With these words, he threw himself upon Juan's neck, and embraced him with a fervour that indicated the return of all his old affections, uttering a thousand exclamations, in which he mingled recurrences to the past with many a reference to the present and future. "This will be a glad day to Catalina, for she ever loved thee--Dolt that I was, to think that her love could be aught but a mother's! My father, Juan, my father, too! his gray hairs will yet be laid in a grave of joy; for he shall behold the son of his daughter seated in the inheritance of a noble father. And thy sister--she shall shine with the proudest and noblest.--I knew thee upon the causeway, too, though I was left in a coma, and half expiring. We have full proof of thy claims.--And thy princess, too--dost thou remember the silver cross?" taking it from his bosom--"Were there a duke's son demanded her, she should be thine.--What ho! some one bring me--But, nay--Thy sister, Juan! does she not live?" Juan was stunned, stupified, bewildered, by a transformation in his own character and in the feelings of the general, so sudden and so marvellous. Yet he strove to reply to the last question, and was in the act of uttering a broken and hasty explanation, when a loud cry came from the passage, and rushing out, they beheld a party of soldiers bearing, in a litter of robes torn from the burning palace, the body, or the living frame, they knew not which, of the unhappy nun, over whom the penitent Gregorio was bitterly lamenting. It was indeed Magdalena, her garments scorched, her face like the face of the dying. Yet she did not seem to have suffered from the flames. The soldiers had found her in a part of the palace not touched by the fire, and scarce invaded by the smoke; and perhaps a subtle physician would have traced her dreadful condition rather to some overpowering convulsion of spirit than to any physical, injury. She was indeed dying, the victim of contending passions, with which the education of a cloister had so ill fitted her to contend. We will not speak of the meeting of Juan and his dark-eyed proselyte. It took place beside the couch of the dying girl, who, for love of him, had given up the vows of religion and the fame of woman, and perished with frenzy, when she discovered that that love was more than the love of a sister.