Beside the fountain where she had parted from Heimbert, Dona Clara was sitting one evening in deep thought.

The guitar on her knees gave forth a few solitary chords, dreamily drawn from it, as it were, by her delicate hands, and at length forming themselves into a melody, while the following words dropped softly from her partly opened lips: "Far away, 'fore Tunis ramparts, Where the Christian army lies, Paynim host are fiercely fighting With Spanish troops and Spain's allies.
Who from bloodstained lilies there, And death's roses pale and fair-- Who has borne the conquerer's prize?
"Ask Duke Alba, ask Duke Alba, Which two knights their fame have proved, One was my own valiant brother, The other was my heart's beloved.
And I thought that I should crown them, Doubly bright with glory's prize, And a widow's veil is falling Doubly o'er my weeping eyes, For the brave knights ne'er again Will be found mid living men." The music paused, and soft dew-drops fell from her heavenly eyes.
Heimbert, who was concealed under the neighboring orange-trees, felt sympathetic tears rolling down his cheeks, and Fadrique, who had led him and Antonia there, could no longer delay the joy of meeting, but stepping forward with his two companions he presented himself before his sister, like some angelic messenger.
Such moments of extreme and sudden delight, the heavenly blessings long expected and rarely vouchsafed, are better imagined by each after his own fashion, and it is doing but an ill service to recount all that this one did and that one said.

Picture it therefore to yourself, dear reader, after your own fancy, as you are certainly far better able to do, if the two loving pairs in my story have become dear to you and you have grown intimate with them.

If that, however, be not the case, what is the use of wasting unnecessary words?
For the benefit of those who with heart-felt pleasure could have lingered over this meeting of the sister with her brother and her lover, I will proceed with increased confidence.

Although Heimbert, casting a significant look at Fadrique, was on the point of retiring as soon as Antonia had been placed under Dona Clara's protection, the noble Spaniard would not permit him.