ly use I have ever made of these
ruffians was to-day, to bring you here. It was a necessity. That O'Brien
had gone on to take you when you arrived. You would never have come
alive out of Havana. I was saving your life. Once there, you could never
have escaped from that man."

I saw suddenly that this might be the truth. There had been something
friendly in Tomas Castro's desire not to compromise me before the people
on board the ship. Obviously he had been acting a part, with a visible
contempt for the pilfering that he could not prevent. He _had_ been sent
merely to bring me to Rio Medio.

"I never disliked you," I protested. "I do not understand what you mean.
All I know is, that you have used me ill--outrageously ill. You have
saved my life now, you say. That may be true; but why did you ever make
me meet with that man O'Brien?"

"And even for that you should not hate me," he said, shaking his head on
the silk pillows. "I never wished you anything but well, Juan, because
you were honest and young, of noble blood, good to look upon; you had
done me and my friend good service, to your own peril, when my own
cousin had deserted me. And I loved you for the sake of another. I loved
your sister. We have a proverb: 'A man is always good to the eyes in
which the sister hath found favour.'"

I looked at him in amazement. "You loved Veronica!" I said. "But
Veronica is nothing at all. There was the Senorita."

He smiled wearily. "Ah, the Senorita; she is very well; a man could love
her, too. But we do not command love, my friend."

I interrupted him. "I want to know why you brought me here. Why did you
ask me to come here when we were on board the _Thames?_"

He answered sadly, "Ah, then! Because I loved your sister, and you
reminded me always of her. But that is all over now--done with for
good.... I have to address myself to dying as it becomes one of my
race to die." He smiled at me. "One must die in peace to die like a
Christian. Life has treated me rather scurvily, only the gentleman must
not repine like a poor man of low birth. I would like to do a good turn
to the friend who is the brother of his sister, to the girl-cousin whom
I do not love with love, but whom I understand with affection--to the
great inheritance that is not for my wasted hands."

I looked out of the open door of the room. There was the absolutely
quiet inner court of the palace, a colonnade of tall square pillars,
in the centre the little thre