years to roll over my head thine
image would still be found here."

She laid her tiny gloved hand upon her breast as she spoke in a low
voice, and this time she looked away from him. He would have given
heaven and earth to have caught her yielding figure in his arms. She
drooped in the saddle beside him in a pose which was a confession of
womanly weakness and she swayed toward him as if the heart in her body
cried out to that which beat in his own breast.

"Mercedes! Mercedes!" he said, "you torture me beyond endurance! Go back
to your duenna, to Senora Agapida, I beg of you! I can stand no more! I
did promise and vow in my heart--my honor--my duty----"

"Ay, with men it is different," said the girl, and the sound of a sob in
her voice cut him to the heart, "and these things are above love, above
everything. I do not--I can not understand. I can not comprehend. You
have rejected me--I have offered myself to you a second time--after the
refusal of last night. Where is my Spanish pride? Where is my maidenly
modesty? That reserve that should be the better part of woman is gone. I
know not honor--duty--I only know that though you reject me, I am yours.
I, too, am a slave. I love you. Nay, I can not marry Don Felipe de
Tobar. 'Twere to make a sacrilege of a sacrament."

[Illustration: Alvarado threw his right arm around her, and with a force
superhuman dragged her from the saddle.]

"Thy father----"

"I have done my best to obey him. I can no more."

"What wilt thou do?"

"This!" cried the girl desperately.

The road at the point they had arrived wound sharply around the spur of
the mountain which rose above them thousands of feet on one side and
fell abruptly away in a terrific precipice upon the other. As she spoke
she struck her horse again with the whip. At the same time by a violent
wrench on the bridle rein she turned him swiftly toward the open cliff.
Quick as she had been, however, Alvarado's own movement was quicker. He
struck spur into his powerful barb and with a single bound was by her
side, in the very nick of time. Her horse's forefeet were slipping among
the loose stones on the edge. In another second they would both be over.
Alvarado threw his right arm around her and with a force superhuman
dragged her from the saddle, at the same time forcing his own horse
violently backward with his bridle hand. His instant promptness had
saved her, for the frightened horse she rode, unable to control himself,
p