It was noon, when Louis again passed the marble gates of the Palacio del Atayada, the deserted mansion of his father; and after journeying over many a league of Arcadian landscape abundant in the olive and the vine; and waving with harvests, which the paternal policy of Ripperda had spread over hill and dale, the heights of Uzeda re-opened to him the distant and transverse vallies of St. Ildefonso and the Escurial.

His carriage turned into a cleft of the hills, overhung with every species of umbrageous trees; and out of whose verdant sides innumerable rills poured themselves over the refreshened earth, from the urns of sculptured nymphs and river-gods reposing in the shade. In the bosom of this green recess stood the villa of Santa Cruz. All around spoke of elegance and taste. The carriage drove under the light portico; and the servants, who thronged round, gave earnest of the hospitable temper of the owner.

Lorenzo questioned them, whether their lord were at the villa. They replied in the negative, but that his lady was there.

"Then I must see the Marchioness," returned Louis; and he sprang from the carriage, the door of which a servant had already opened. Lorenzo remained below for further orders, while his master was conducted up stairs into a splendid saloon, whose capacious sides were hung with the finest pictures of the Italian and Flemish schools. But no object could displace from the vision of Louis, the dungeon which had contained his father.

He had written his name with pencil upon a leaf which he tore from his pocket-book, and sent it to the Marchioness. It was some time before a reply was returned to him, or, indeed, any person re-appeared. His anxiety became insufferable. He paced the room with impatience, and a sickening heart. For he knew not but the delay of first one ten minutes, and then of another, before he could follow the track he expected to find in the packet he sought, might, by leaving his father undefended in all the personal dangers of a pursuit, be the very means of allowing him to be retaken.

In the midst of these harassing fears, the door opened, and a young lady entered, who, by her air, could not be mistaken for other than one of the noble members of the family, though her dress was that of a religieuse. It was all of spotless white, with a long black rosary hanging from her breast. Her face was mild and pale; but it was the transparent hue of the virgin flower of spring, clad in her veiling leaves. It was Marcella.

Her mother had received the name of the Marquis de Montemar in her chamber. She was an invalid; but remembering the reception his family had given to her son in Lindisfarne, she sent her daughter to bid him welcome.

When Marcella entered, she drew back a moment, on beholding so different a person from the one she had expected to see in the son of the Duke de Ripperda. He had been reported by the ladies of Vienna as "the glass of fashion, and the mold of form!" Her brother had described him as gay and volant; full of the rich glow of health, and animated with a joyous life, that made the sense ache to follow it through all its wild excursiveness. The Spaniards, on returning from Vienna, spoke of him as vain or proud, a coxcomb or a cynic, just as their envy or their prejudices prevailed. But Sinzendorff, her revered uncle, had written of him as one whom all the women loved, while he loved only honour. His letters had given the Marchioness an account of the young minister's entanglement and release from the woman who had laid similar snares for her son; and he dwelt with encomium on his unshaken firmness through every change of fortune. As Marcella passed from her mother's chamber, these recollections crowded upon her; and all were calculated to increase the timidity of her approach. She was going to present herself, and alone, to an admired young man, proud in conscious dignity, whose lustre calamity could not dim, and whose spirit was exasperated by oppression!

But instead of this lofty Marquis de Montemar, gallant in attire, and resplendent in manly beauty; stern in resentful virtue; and upholding in his own high port, all the threatened honours of his race; she beheld a youthful, and a fine form indeed, but in a neglected dress covered with dust. The jewels of his hat were broken away; and its disordered plumage darkly shaded his colourless cheek and eyes, whence every ray of joy had fled. Beauty was there; but it was the beauty of sadness; it was the crushed ruin of what might once have been bright and aspiring.

Marcella wondered, for a moment, at the change which grief must have made; and with a very different sentiment from that with which she entered, she approached the son of Ripperda. She held a packet in her hand. Louis's heart bounded towards it, and he hastily advanced.

"From my father, Madam!"

"It was left with my mother two nights ago, by the Duke de Ripperda's servant;" replied she; "and he informed her, that the envelope directed to my father, contained a letter for the Marquis de Montemar. My mother would not detain it from you till she could present it herself; being only now preparing to leave her chamber, and therefore she confided its delivery to me."

As she spoke, she put the packet into his hand. By these words he found he was in the presence of the Marquis Santa Cruz's daughter; and, expressing his thanks, he begged permission to peruse it before he quitted the house. She answered politely in the affirmative, and immediately withdrew.

Louis had observed nothing of her face or figure, to distinguish her again from the next stranger who might enter the room. The novelty of her dress, however, could not escape even his possessed eye; and in the moment he learnt who she was, he thought of Ferdinand and Alice, and of their future union; of which her assumption of that garb seemed a promise. But as soon as she disappeared, he forgot both, and every accompanying circumstance, and even where he was, in his eagerness to make himself master of the contents of the packet.

On breaking the seal, a letter at the top of a bundle of papers presented itself. He seized it, and began to read it with avidity. It was written by Ripperda under all the exasperation of his mind, when he believed himself not merely the object of the world's ingratitude, but abandoned by his own and only son. Yet he forebore to specify his injuries; saying, that to name them, would be to stigmatize the whole human race. He had hitherto lived for universal man:—his days should terminate on a different principle. He would yet confound his enemies, and astonish Europe. But it should not be by embracing revenge through the treasons, whose arms were extended to receive and to avenge him. He would maintain his integrity to the last; and from the heights of Gibraltar assert the honour of a name, whose last glories might die with him, but never should wane in his person till he set in the grave.

Louis would not think twice on the implied suspicions against himself, which every sentence of the letter contained. They were bitterness to his heart; but he knew his innocence. He now knew the point to which his father was gone; and thither he determined to follow him.

The papers in the packet contained schedules of the vast properties of the Duke, that were cast over the face of Spain, in landed estates, immense manufactories, and countless avenues of merchandize.

"I bestow them all on my son;" was written by Ripperda on the envelope which contained the catalogue; "they may give power and consequence to the Marquis de Montemar, when he has forgotten that the Duke de Ripperda was his father."

A memorandum of his territories in Spanish America was bound up with the others; and brief directions added on each head, how his son was to secure his rights in them all.

Louis ran over these lists and their explications, that he might not leave a single word unnoted; but when he had finished, he closed up all that related to pecuniary affairs, and laying them aside in the packet, again turned to the letter. It alone would be his study and business, till he should reach Gibraltar, and prove to his father, that by his side, in poverty or disgrace, it was his determination to live or die.

He was yet leaning over the letter, perusing it a second time, when he heard the door open behind him. He looked round, and saw the daughter of Santa Cruz re-enter, supporting on her arm an elderly lady of a noble air, who appeared an invalid. He guessed her to be the Marchioness; and rising instantly, approached her. "Marquis," said she, "I come, thus in my sick attire, to welcome the son of the Duke de Ripperda, to the house of my husband. I know his respect for your father; also his esteem of yourself; and whatever may have been the misrepresentations of evil tongues, my brother the Count Sinzendorff has not left the character of the Marquis de Montemar without an advocate."

The Marchioness observed a brilliant flush shoot over the face of her auditor, as he bowed his head to her last words. She added, in a still more respectful tone, softened even to tenderness by the sentiment of pity; "The machinations of these enemies have been too successful against the Duke. Indeed, I doubt not, that packet has spared me the pain of saying, you must seek your noble father in the Alcazar of Segovia."

Louis briefly related the events of the last six hours; and presented her the note to read, which his servant had found on the table in the prison, and which had referred him to the Marquis Santa Cruz. The Marchioness had seated herself, and placed her guest beside her. She read the note; and looked with maternal sympathy upon the distressful countenance of the duteous son to whom it addressed so cutting a reproach. Her commiserating questions, and the knowledge she shewed of all the virtues of his father; added to the information, that her husband was hastening from Italy, to interest himself in his cause; seemed to demand from Louis his fullest confidence. He revealed to her the substance of what his father had written in the packet; and declared his intention to follow him immediately to Gibraltar.

The Marchioness approved of his reunion with his father, but resisted his quitting her house, till he had taken the repose she saw he so much needed. Louis would have been unmoved in his resolve to commence his journey that very night, had she not suggested, that, severely as the Duke had been used before his flight, should he be retaken, his treatment would be yet more rigorous; and, therefore, his son must be careful not to be himself the guide to so fearful a catastrophe. She assured Louis, that now ministers knew of his arrival, all his movements would be watched; and that above all things, his pursuing the direct route of his father, must be avoided. She urged, that a rash step at this crisis, might be fatal; and, therefore, conjured him to remain that night at least, under her roof; where he might consider and reconder his future plans, and take the rest that was necessary to support him through the trials he might yet have to sustain.

There was so much good sense and precaution in this counsel, that Louis no longer found an argument to oppose it; and adopting her advice of turning in a direction from Gibraltar, rather than towards it, proposed going to Cadiz, and thence hiring a vessel to take him by sea to the British fortress. This being sanctioned by her approbation, he no longer hesitated to pass the remainder of the day, and the night, under her friendly shelter; and while she retired with her daughter, he followed a page to an apartment, where every comfort was provided, that could refresh the weary traveller.

After she had withdrawn, the Marchioness would not permit her daughter to quit the side of the couch on which she reclined; but continued discoursing of the interesting son of the fugitive Duke, and recapitulating all the kindnesses which his English relatives had shewn to her darling Ferdinand in Lindisfarne.

"Marcella," said she, "we must repay part of that vast debt, to this inestimable young man. Your brother has not exaggerated his merits. For, never did I see exquisite beauty so unconsciously possessed; nor heroic indifference to the world's idols, expressed with such noble simplicity."

When Louis rejoined the kind hostess, his misfortunes and his manners had so happily propitiated, she was seated with her meditative daughter in the evening saloon; which opened to a small lake, surrounded by aromatic groves. She rose to receive him.

Relieved from immediate alarm for his father's personal safety, by knowing that his projected asylum was the one least likely to occur to his pursuers, Louis's agitated mind had sunk into a kind of torpid repose. He took the seat offered to him, by the Marchioness; and listened to her conversation with soothed attention. There was something in her figure and air, which so reminded him of the cherishing mother of his youth, Mrs. Coningsby, that his harassed soul seemed to have regained its home, while he drank in her sweet maternal comfortings. She appeared to know by intuition the fittest medicine for his spirit; but she only spoke from her own noble nature, and it mingled direct with his. She expatiated on his father's character; on the envy of his rivals; and dated his fall to their ambition alone. She dwelt on the high reverence in which he was held by the King and Queen; and affirmed, that justice must be done him, both by Sovereign and people, when experience should have taught them how they had cast away their benefactor.—

"Meanwhile," said she, "how glorious he is in suffering magnanimously for his virtues!"

"So to suffer, is the Cross that makes our virtues Christian!" observed Marcella in a low voice, hardly aware that she had uttered what was passing in her thoughts.

The remark was so like what he would have expected from the lips of his first christian teacher, that Louis turned towards the speaker. He turned to look on her; recollecting that she was not merely the daughter of the amiable woman who was so maternally solicitous about him; but the disinterested sister, whose self-sacrifice was to empower her brother to complete the happiness of Alice Coningsby. Though she had been the first to welcome him to this hospitable refuge, in most inhospitable Spain, he had noticed her so little, he could not have recognised her in any other garb. He now perused her pensive countenance. It was fair and meek, and touched with the tenderest sensibility. Her eyes were hidden with their downward lashes; and the shadow of her veil tempered the dazzling whiteness of her forehead, while the dark and glossy tresses that braided its arching brows, gave her the air of a youthful Madonna. Her soft white hand at that moment pressing the cross to her bosom, completed the picture. Unconscious of observation, she was then breathing an internal prayer for the Duke and his son; and continuing her meditations on their fate, did not raise her eyes from the floor.

Louis looked on her, but it was as he would have looked on a lovely image of the consecrated being she resembled; and again he turned to the voice of her mother.

The Marchioness finding him so composed, entered fully into all she knew of the rise and progress of the conspiracy which had ruined his father. She recounted the various perfidies of the inmates of the Palais d'Espagne; which had been confided to her, in the exultation of triumph, by Donna Laura. She narrated particulars in the correspondence between de Patinos and his father, the Marquis de Castellor; and gave instances of even deeper double-dealing in Baptista Orendayn, the nephew of the Count de Paz. Indeed, she hoped, the Marquis, her husband, would be able to prove, by what she could impart, that Orendayn was concerned with a subborned band of ruffians who attacked the Duke de Ripperda in the Appenines; and would certainly have destroyed him there, but for the fortunate intervention of a stranger.

This assassination was the device of his Spanish rivals. And it was as well known by the Marchioness's informants, that the attempt which was made on the Duke in the porch of the Jesuits' college, was the work of certain Austrians at the court of Vienna; and not at all arising from the partizans of the Electress. The Bavarians had never gone farther than to way-lay for the state papers; and under the leading of Count Stalhberg, they had taken the dispatches from Castanos; which, being examined by the party, were afterwards returned.

In recapitulating this host of jealous adversaries, she asserted that none were so actively hostile to Ripperda as the Austrian junto; at the head of which was Count Routemberg, whose darling policy was to place eternal barriers between any future junction of the empire and Spain. In his house the confederation was formed, that was to accomplish the destruction of Ripperda and his plans; and by a secret management it was supported and impelled by the Emperor himself.

While Louis listened to this information, which agreed so fatally with Wharton's last conference in the garden of the chateau, he became more and more bewildered on the motives of his false friend.

At last the Marchioness mentioned that name, which never could be heard by him with indifference; his confidence, or his detestation must rest upon it. He was thinking of the accumulated treachery of Wharton, when she pronounced his name. He started as if it took him by surprise. In her eagerness she did not observe his emotion, but dwelt on the English Duke's clandestine interviews with Grimaldo, de Paz, and the Queen; shewing their results in the King's inflexibility to Ripperda's demands to be heard; and his subsequent warrant, to silence the injured minister's appeal in the sealed dungeons of the Inquisition.

In the height of her representations, Louis, with a tremendous fire in his before faded eye, grasped the arm of the Marchioness, and desperately exclaimed,

"Cease that theme—or it will make me a murderer!"

His manner alarmed the Marchioness, and terrified Marcella. The former, however, restrained herself, and mildly pressing down the hand that clasped her's, detained him on his seat; while Marcella started from her chair, and gazed upon his flashing countenance with dismay. His terrific guilty words yet rung in her ears. For a moment his eye caught the expression of her's; and he answered the horror in her face by the exclamation,

"I loved, and trusted him—and he has betrayed my father!"

He turned away as he spoke, and walked to the other end of the room. The eyes of the Marchioness and her daughter met with an anguish of commiseration in each, neither of them could utter. Marcella looked again at his agitated movements, as his back was towards her. His words, "I loved, and trusted him—and he betrayed my father!" had smote upon her filial heart; and tears gushing into her eyes, she glided from his presence, to pray and weep in secret.

When Louis recovered himself, he scarcely remarked that Marcella had withdrawn.

In hopes to sooth him, the Marchioness asked two or three questions respecting Wharton. Twice he attempted to speak, before he could give any voice to what he wished to say; at last he hastily articulated.

"Spare me on this subject. I would forget him, if God will grant me that gracious oblivion; for that is the only way by which I can remain guiltless of his blood!"

"Rash de Montemar!" cried the Marchioness, pitying while she reproved; "were my holy daughter here, she would tell you, that if you have hope of heaven's pardon for your own errors, you must forgive your enemies!"

An agonized smile gleamed on his convulsed lip.

"My own enemies, I could forgive, and load with benefits. There are some, were they my enemies alone, I could love in spite of every injury; and pray for them, as for the peace of my own soul. But when they extend their malice to my father; when they betray his trusting faith, and give him to the murderous gripe of them who lurk for his honour and his life: they are his enemies, and I cannot forgive them."

"Yet, do not risk your life, which is now his sole comfort," cried she, "Appeal to Heaven, and it will avenge you."

Again Louis walked from her. He felt that, inexorably as he now believed he hated Wharton, and horrible as was the idea of meeting him arm to arm; yet, even that would be more tolerable to him than to invoke Almighty power for vengeance.

A sad confusion of right and wrong, struggled in his breast; but the better principle prevailed; and, even while the pressure of new convictions against Wharton, crowded upon him, he felt that the bitterest pang of all, would be an assurance that by such guilt on guilt, his false friend had forfeited the mercy of his God. In his fiercest throes of resentment, he could yet say with the Divine Spirit, "I have no pleasure in the death of a sinner; but rather that he should turn from his wickedness and live!"

The Marchioness marked his unuttered emotion, and with self-blame at the amplitude of her communications, apologised for her indiscretion, and proposed his seeking composure in rest. He gladly acquiesced; while he begged her, not to distress herself by regretting what she had said; for it was necessary to his father's preservation and to his own, that he should know all his enemies, and the extent of their malice.

It was now within an hour of midnight. On Louis entering his chamber, he sent away Lorenzo; that he, at least, might enjoy the sleep that fled his master's eyes. In a few minutes he was alone, in a magnificent apartment, where every tranquillizing luxury invited to repose. But the downy couch would then have been a bed of thorns to him. He continued to walk the room from hour to hour, in perturbed meditation on all that he had seen and heard through the day.

His spirit was on the wing to rush through every obstacle to his father's feet; to labour day and night, to redeem the reputation sacrificed by his flight; and to avenge himself on the slanderous world, by some glorious assertion of the names of de Montemar and Ripperda.

At last, his exhausted taper went out suddenly; and, being without the means of replenishing its light, he threw himself on the bed to muse till morning.