"Oh, senora, save him!" cried Leila, turning to Donna Inez, whom both
father and child had hitherto forgotten, and who now stood gazing upon
Almamen with wondering and anxious eyes. "Whither can he fly? The
vaults of the castle may conceal him. This way-hasten!"

"Stay," said Inez, trembling, and approaching close to Almamen: "do I see
aright? and, amidst the dark change of years and trial, do I recognise
that stately form, which once contrasted to the sad eye of a mother the
drooping and faded form of her only son? Art thou not he who saved my
boy from the pestilence, who accompanied him to the shores of Naples, and
consigned him to these arms? Look on me! dost thou not recall the mother
of thy friend?"

"I recall thy features dimly and as in a dream," answered the Hebrew;
"and while thou speakest, there rush upon me the memories of an earlier
time, in lands where Leila first looked upon the day, and her mother sang
to me at sunset by the stream of the Euphrates, and on the sites of
departed empires. Thy son--I remember now: I had friendship then with a
Christian--for I was still young."

"Waste not the time--father--senora!" cried Leila, impatiently clinging
still to her father's breast.

"You are right; nor shall your sire, in whom I thus wonderfully recognise
my son's friend, perish if I can save him."

Inez then conducted her strange guest to a small door in the rear of the
castle; and after leading him through some of the principal apartments,
left him in one of the tiring-rooms adjoining her own chamber, and the
entrance to which the arras concealed. She rightly judged this a safer