"Catalina de Villa Franca! dearest, hear my voice! Speak to me. Never until this moment of horror and woe did I know how much I loved you." He rent the silk sash from his shoulder[*] and endeavoured to stanch the blood, while the unfortunate girl opened her lustrous eyes, and gazed upon him with a look which, while it told of exquisite pain—of love and delight, too surely convinced him, by its terrible expression, that she was—dying. [*] The crimson sash is worn over the left shoulder in Highland regiments. "You have come, Ronald. I expected you many—many months ago," she whispered in broken accents, while her wild black eyes were fixed on his with an expression of tenderness. "Hold me up, dearest—hold me up, that I may look upon you for the last time,—on the face I have loved so long, and used to dream about in the long nights at Merida and Almarez. O that my brother, Alvaro, was here too! Holy—holy Mother of God! look on me—I am dying!" "Ah, Catalina! speak not thus: every word sinks like a sword into my heart. Dying! oh, it cannot be! You shall live if the aid of art and affection can preserve you. You _shall_ live," he added frantickly, "and for me." "O no—never—not for you!" she said bitterly, in tones gradually becoming more hollow, "it may not be. Alas! I am not what I was an hour ago. I cannot,—I cannot now be yours, even should I escape death, whose cold hand is passing over my heart." "Almighty Power, preserve my senses! What is this you say?" he replied, raising her head upon his knee, and gathering in his hand the soft dishevelled curls which streamed freely upon the turf. "What mean these terrible words, Catalina?" Before she replied, a shudder convulsed her frame, and drops of white froth fell from her lips. A strange light sparkled in her eyes: there was something singularly fearful and beautiful in the expression of her pale countenance at that moment. "I need not shrink from telling you the dreadful truth,—I need not deceive you," she added, speaking more fluently as a passionate flow of tears relieved her. "I feel in my heart a sensation, which announces that the moment of dissolution is at hand. I hail it with joy,—I wish not to live. The wretch who deceived us has robbed me of that which is most precious to a woman, and then with his dagger—"